The Man On The Moon

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the day man first walked on the moon.

I remember that day, or rather that evening, like it happened last week. I was about to turn 16 yrs old in 5 days. It was a Sunday, which meant spending the morning at church and then a big Sunday meal; on this day it was fried chicken. The day like so many summer days was a lazy one but with a sense of anticipation hanging heavy in the air. The whole world was waiting to see if what we had been told would happen, actually could happen…a space capsule was landing on the surface of the moon and it was, miraculously, to be something the world could watch on our television sets.

The day went slower than normal, the way time slows down when you are anxiously awaiting something to happen. Finally the sun began to set and the cool of the evening came. It was nearly time. My family gathered together around my grandparents’ TV. We were more quiet than normal. All the usual chatter and laughter was subdued. We found our places around the living room and turned on the TV. Then we watched as history unfolded before our eyes. Neil Armstrong descended from the space capsule and in what seemed like slow motion he put one foot and then the other on the surface of the moon and uttered those now famous words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” That was truly awe inspiring and I recall the hairs, on the back of my neck and my arms, standing at attention because of the goosebumps I was experiencing.

A cheer went up in our living room, like it did more than likely in every living room with a TV set across America. But then, for me, a strange thing happened. I saw something other than what I had just witnessed on the TV that I had never seen before. My grandfather, Papaw, sitting in his big living room recliner broke down and began to cry. The room got very quiet. “Why are you crying Papaw?”, was my obvious question to him. He composed himself and gave me an answer that I can hear him say even as I type this story. “Honeygirl, as a little boy I traveled from Tennessee to Texas in a covered wagon. And today I just watched a man walk on the moon!”

The changes in the world that he had witnessed, and the advancements civilization had made, just in the course of his lifetime, were astonishing and he was overcome with emotion contemplating them. It was a powerful and poignant moment. And not just for him, it was a powerful moment for every one of us in our living room that night 50 years ago.

There are those moments in each of our lives that serve as markers. They are the exclamation marks in our life stories, at the end of otherwise simple ordinary paragraphs in the book of our life. Sometimes we know about them ahead of time and wait with anticipation for them to happen, and sometimes, probably more often, they happen out of the blue. A big moment that changes us, helps us mark a memory, gives us understanding about ourselves or someone we love.

Every person over about the age of 55 yrs. will likely have some memory of this historic event. It is a memory for many. But it wasn’t watching Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon that made the memory so big to me. Or even what changed me and my perspective on life. It was my grandfather’s memory of his life as a child, held up against mine and the inevitable awareness that we can’t stop change. Nor should we, but we so often spin our wheels trying to keep things the way they’ve always been rather than accept the change before us or allow ourselves to truly experience and understand something from someone else’s point of view.

I think we could use a whole lot more of seeing the world through other people’s eyes. It would give us understanding. Someone once told me that when understanding grows up it becomes wisdom. That person would be the man who cried 50 years ago as he watched a man walk on the moon. Couldn’t we all use a lot more understanding and wisdom? Wouldn’t our world be a kinder, better place if instead of power and influence, understanding and wisdom were the things most sought after? Proverbs chapter 3, verses 13-14 of the Bible tell us, “Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver, and yields better returns than gold.” Something to think about.