William Shatner – His Discovery from Space

Mission: To Explore Strange New Worlds
Correction: Your World is ALL You Have

The television program, Star Trek, captivated audiences and its popularity later generated an unforeseeable fan adoration for that creative series. The program provided an always-positive, unpredictable escape from the events of the real world happening in the United States between 1966-1969.

Captain Kirk was given the opportunity to travel into space at age 90, under his real name, William Shatner, on October 13, 2021. I did not pay attention to that event at the time. But today someone posted on Facebook what Shatner experienced on that little ride into real space. I was so stunned by his reflections on that trip that I created this post just for you.

This excerpt comes from Shatner’s just-published biography, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, released for sale on October 4 by Simon & Schuster.

I will take the liberty of emboldening the phrases that strike me as important. After you read this excerpt, I will add a few thoughts on our era, and Shatner’s experience helping us in our own.

William Shatner’s Reflections Looking Down Upon Earth

We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there.

I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared.

I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space…but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death.

I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong….I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different.

It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.

William Shatner Saw the Truth

When I think about how our One World is divided–not by reality but by divisions learned and taught by human brains–into Good Nations and Bad Nations, Best Races and Inferior Races, Rich and Poor, Famous and No-Value, Right and Wrong, Beautiful and Ugly, Perfect and Deformed, Smart and Stupid, Predator and Victim, Healthy and Sick, American and Russian, Republican and Democrat (or any nation’s political parties), all that is wrong, incorrect, fictive, terms merely used to put people into their proper pigeon-holes.

We all travel down our mother’s birth canal.

We all squint and cry when the bright light of the Outer World hits our pupils for the first time.

We all need to be wiped down and wrapped up. We all need to be warm and be held.

We all need to feed from our mother’s breast.

We all need to be picked up when we fall, our knees bloodied and dirty, needing bandages and kisses.

We all need someone to protect us when we are little and a bully threatens us.

When we get older…when we grow up to be Presidents of nations, 5-Star Generals, Captains of Finance, Editors of Propaganda,  and oh, so full of ourselves and our plans and our warnings and bombast…we all face the identical situation, when we contract a simple tiny virus, and when we all are brought low by uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting, as we hang over or onto the toilet bowl and beg, “God, I am ready to die,” although we are in a temporary moment of sickness.

When we come to our death, and we are alone in the bed, lying in urine and fecal matter, too weak to be embarrassed, too weak to call for someone to clean us up, we all want someone to be with us, to hold our hand, to stroke our sweaty brow, to come near as we whisper our last thought, before we cross that bridge into the darkness, alone.

I BEG YOU, STAND UP, WHILE YOU LIVE

Idiots follow the words of politicians, generals, and religious clergy in this country. Every so-called “leader” wants to move the People in his or her direction, or, wants the CROWD to applaud in support because he does not tell them the TRUTH about our COMMON LIFE together, with our children, grandchildren, and neighbors, all over the World. Politicians, Military, and Clergy, historically are untrustworthy, in every nation.

One would imagine that the Clergy would be first to tell the truth, because they know God is listening and watching. But they really reveal their atheism, because they speak to be approved of by those who pay their check. So whichever way the political wind blows among the Masses, the clergy creatively find ways to make “God’s Will” conform to what the People expect, in their desire NOT to confess their sins against their fellow human beings, and a holy and righteous God.

We are IN THIS LIFE together, and IN THIS WORLD together.

If the leaders of the United States and Russia, all the Asian, European, South American, and African Nations would REMEMBER they are members of the same species; with the same Birth; with the same Infancy; with the same Childhood; with the same Adult stages; and, all facing the same Death, THEN, there would be no talk about “First Strike Nuclear Plans and Policy,” except among those whom the rest of us would point to as certifiably in need of psychiatric treatment for mental disorders.

John Dudley Willis
November 7, 2022