Everyday Musings > Oxygen

At the Landmark in action series a few weeks ago, it was our turn to make declarations for our life. Someone walked up and said they'd make films that would change the world. Everyone clapped. Someone said they'd work on making their family really happy. Everyone clapped. Then one chap walked up and said, I'm going to be the Prime Minister of India in 2010. Everyone laughed. Some said 'what rubbish', 'this is silly', 'there's no way he can do this' etc etc.

The seminar leader spoke up. He said that by laughing his declaration off, we were depriving the speaker of a fair hearing. We were creating no space for his possibility to do what he wanted to and had already judged him a failure. The point was not whether it is achievable, but that everyone's dreams, no matter how impossible they sound, need oxygen to survive.

Why Oxygen? How does that apply here? Let's see the function of Oxygen in our lives to see that.

Oxygen is what makes us live moment to moment. That feeds us with the possibility of seeing the future, or rather making the future happen. When we provide a person's dreams or ideas with Oxygen, we are nurturing him/her, supporting him/her in getting to what he/she wants. This man's declaration of being PM was as possible as the chap who wanted to make films or who wanted to make his family happy. But we clapped for the ideas we could see as 'yes, that can happen'. And laughed at ideas that we didn't think could happen. We do this in daily life too. With children, our parents, siblings, colleagues, teachers, friends, everyone. We cut off their Oxygen with our reactions.

Flying, circumnavigation, computers, television, mobile phones, India gaining independence through non-violence; all of these were ideas that were laughed at where shared as possibilities, but they happened, and we now take them for granted. And laugh at other ideas which generations after us might take for granted.

Guru forwarded this to me today. In a strange way it is about an idea that had no Oxygen at one time, till one man changed it all.

'When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only said his famous "One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind" statement, but followed it by several remarks - usual communication traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut; however, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian nor American space programs. Over the years, many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant. On July 5, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question: "When I was a kid, I was playing baseball with my brother in the backyard. He had hit a fly ball which landed in front of my neighbours' bedroom window. The neighbours were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As I leaned down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!" That kid did get to the moon. Because unlike Mrs Gorsky, a whole nation believed he could do it.'

I wonder why Human Beings, unlike plants, never generate Oxygen. We only consume it and give out carbon-di-oxide. Maybe this is a way we can make good and breathe easy.