Let me tell you a story of what space means to me and why I find it deeply spiritual. Now, that is usually the time when you as the reader either decide to read on or decide that this is not worth your time. I’ll try to make this as short as the number of English words I knew when I was 7. The answer, by the way, is about 1500.
I first grew interested in space not from looking out at the sky as the childhood picture may imply but rather from books at the local public library. My mom encouraged me to read and took me there almost every weekend. Since I had just arrived in America when I was barely 7, I knew almost no English and gravitated towards the books that had more pictures. Maybe it was divine intervention but what irresistibly pulled me in were the beautiful picture books of astronomy. When I first saw the photos of celestial objects including Earth from space, I hardly believed they were real. Libraries and bookstores were not common in China at that time and I had never seen anything like this prior to visiting American libraries.
When I saw the beautiful photos of Earth from outer space and other worlds like the moon and Mars from the photos taken by Apollo astronauts and robotic landers, I was astounded that humans were able to build machines to observe them. I was even more stunned by the photos of galaxies and nebulas hundreds if not millions of light years away. From an early age, I recall declaring to my parents proudly that one day I will become an astronomer or space scientist.
Years later, I ended up going to college and acquiring dual degrees in aerospace engineering and physics. Through parental pressure, I felt obligated to do engineering instead of just pure science. Then, I continued my education in graduate school in aerospace engineering with a focus on mission design to a near earth asteroid. Then I got a job in the aerospace industry in Houston and finally reached my dream of working in the space industry. I worked on the International Space Station program for a bit before going to work on commercial lunar programs. In 2024, I accomplished a grandiose dream of helping America land back on the moon after the last Apollo astronaut left in 1972 through the Intuitive Machines Nova C lander. THE END.
If my life story was this straightforward, it would not be much of a story. Perhaps this is the story of many of my colleagues but it definitely was not mine. First and foremost, I have never identified myself as an engineer. I was not someone who busily played with robots or built Legos for fun in his spare time as a child. I spent much more time creating fictional worlds with my friends in my bedroom using my toys, daydreaming, looking at the sky, and reading inspiring books.
I was and I’m still a dreamer and spiritual being above all else. What absorbed my attention was our place in the universe and how insignificant we are as humans. Reading provided a ready avenue to open my eyes to this reality. Aside from hard science books on space, I loved reading poetry and science fiction. In much of the material I read, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, I frequently came across the notion that we humans are utterly insignificant in the grand scope of the universe. We may be several billion creatures but we all reside on a tiny little planet in an ordinary star system on the outer edges of a spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy that contains over 100 billion stars. The number of galaxies themselves number over 100 billion as well and can possibly be up to 2 trillion. These numbers are truly astronomical.
All of our problems on Earth (poverty, famine, homelessness and conflicts just to name a few) on this planet seemed so insignificant compared to the cosmic question of our place in this indescribably vast universe. I never saw myself as someone who would want to fight in a war for the right cause or develop the next gadget to make a lot of money when there was such a fundamental question that I wanted to help in answering: who are we in this universe and what can we discover out there?
I have said that my path in life has not being a straight path. I didn’t go directly into the space industry after graduation. At first I tried doing my own space research startup and when that collapsed as well as my self-confidence in ever landing an aerospace job, I turned to other fields in education and solar energy. Those fields were interesting and for a while I thought I was doing meaningful work. However, in the background, I always thought something was amiss. Only later did I realize that my soul was slowly dying.
I realized after I transitioned back to work on space that helping humanity explore the cosmos and hopefully understand it better is where my soul truly feels alive. I want to quote a few passages from a passage called Geography of the Soul in a favorite book called Dream of Spaceflight by Wyn Wachhorst. This was a book that my grad school adviser highly enjoyed and recommended; he was also a literature aficionado like myself.
In the long run, the whole politics of society is more profoundly changed by a new sense of human potential than any amount of obsessive self-maintenance. “Where there is no vision,” says the proverb of Solomon, “the people perish.” Without a source of meaning larger than the ego or beyond mere survival, one is left at the center of a universe devoid of transcendence. The significance of anything derives from its larger context, one dependent in turn on still greater perspectives, until we reach what sociologist Peter Berger calls the “sacred canopy,” the boundary where known and unknown meet.
These days, I continue to read an immense amount since I find books to be deeply meaningful from both intellectual and spiritual realms. I like to read works that propel my imagination or fill up my soul and mind. I believe this universe or God (if you believe that) has a way of giving me spiritual food when I’m not even looking for it. Today (December 28, 2024), when I was at a local Houston wellness store, I talked to the local store owner and flipped open to a random page in the book Mind & Body.
Lo and behold, I had opened to page 90 and the passage that stood staring at me explained so poetically how I have felt since I was a child. When I was a child I did not have such eloquent language for it. I could feel but I could not explain so articulately. I will quote it here.
We are not at the centre of anything, thankfully. We are minuscule bundles of evanescent matter in an infinitesimal corner of a boundless universe. We do not count one bit in the grander scheme. This is a liberation. Rather than complaining that we are too small, we can delight in being humbled by a mighty ocean, a glacier or planet Kepler-22b, 638 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus. We can gain relief from the thought of the kindly indifference of spatial infinity, where no one will notice and where the wind erodes the rocks in the space between the stars. Cosmic humility — taught to us by nature, history and sky above us — is a blessing and a constant alternative to a life of frantic jostling, humourlessness and anxious pride.
I do believe we are insignificant and precisely because of that, I feel like I must make the most meaning possible in my life. What is genuinely important to me is to be living a life of both purpose and love. For my personal happiness, I continuously seek a better understanding and practice of self-love, love towards others and love of the divine through therapy, spiritual groups, self-reflection, reading, and genuine loving relationships. On an existential scale, I want to create a change for our species on this tiny world by inspiring others with wonder about our universe as well as working on projects myself. Aside from what most people would call a day job, I run a space radio podcast, read poetry at open mics, write reflective essays and books on science and poetry and frequently daydream of a better tomorrow. I do not believe that a true perfect society is possible but I do believe that one day we humans can become a true spacefaring civilization. At that time, I would expect us to have also advanced sociologically and emotionally where we help each other explore both our inner space and outer space with those two intimately tied together. I aspire to live a life helping us towards this possible future.
