Monday Lesson From History

Five days from now, Saturday June 20 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first landing of humans on the Moon.  Neil Armstrong of course became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface, but that contact was made due to the work and spirit of hundreds of millions of Americans.  This attitude was captured in President John F Kennedy’s speech to Congress in 1961, when he detailed the importance of space exploration:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth…But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon – if we make this judgement affirmatively, it will be an entire nation.

Eight years later (eight years!) an American mission would complete that journey and plant our flag on the Moon.  Eight years during which the country grieved with the murder of a president, struggled with our historical errors on civil rights, and battled communist foes in Southeast Asia.  Despite those challenges, America was able to focus and achieve what was thought to be undoable.  And that is exactly why JFK declared, in 1962, that we would go to the Moon:

We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…

That spirit should never leave us, that we can do what others believe we can not.  Be it as an individual or as a country, we should never back down from a challenge because overcoming that challenge is where true greatness is achieved.