The Overview Effect

In 2021, William Shatner, the actor famous for his role as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, became the oldest person ever to fly in space at 90 years of age. But when he came back down and was greeted by the media, he wasn't joyful. He was in tears, because seeing how fragile our Earth and its thin atmosphere looked against the blackness of space had filled him with grief.

What he experienced is familiar to astronauts, and is called the Overview Effect - a profound feeling of awe and appreciation for our planet, a sense of connection to its people and nature as a whole.

In his 1974 memoir, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins said: "I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of... 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced." Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) was a bit less eloquent, stating that you want to "grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'look at that, you son of a bitch".

Perhaps going into space at least once should be a requirement for becoming a world leader?

I find it fascinating that the AI chose to leave his visor open.
I swear it wasn't in the prompt.

While space flight remains unattainable for most of us, nearly all of us will face life events that force us out of our safe zones. Perhaps it's the death of someone close to us, a painful breakup, accident or illness. Or it might be something positive, such as a new job, moving to another country or becoming a parent.

Life has ways of "dragging us out" and showing us things that will force us to reconsider our values and perspectives. In those times we may learn something new about ourselves, or about people we thought we knew, or how the world is. And it's often painful, as growth tends to be.