Here’s a heart-warming story regarding space: NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft carried the ashes of American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto on February 18, 1930. New Horizon left Earth on January 19, 2006 and traveled for nine years, three billion miles, to reach Pluto. Recently there has been a lot of positive news about traveling to space and making considerable progress.
At this rate, I’m sure the next generation of students will be able to choose which star floating in space will host them for summer camp. It isn’t easy quantifying the size of our galaxy. Our home, called Earth, is just a Pale Blue Dot (from Carl Sagan’s book, inspired by an image taken four billion miles away from Voyager one, on February 1990) of 400 billion stars in our galaxy! And that’s not it — There are 100 billion galaxies. We are only one in the universe of 100 billion galaxies in space, and there may well be 500 billion galaxies as they expand every day. When you think about how small our planet is, I question why we struggle with such trivial things as racism, hate crimes, or ideology. Why can’t we stick together? We are all citizens of this tiny village! Sometimes, I wonder what I’d be doing if I were brought up in a middle-class family in America on a different path, whether I would have survived the competition and if I’d be happier with the things I’d be doing instead. One thing for sure is that I’d still be an explorer with the things that need to move to the next step.
It has indeed been a bumpy road, but I am incredibly fortunate to have such diverse friends in so many different countries who have believed in me and shared meaningful things about life on this journey of mine. I’m satisfied that I’ve lived by my philosophy, which was never harmful to anyone, but helpful instead. While writing my first book, Wonder, I planned for my death and even chose my tombstone. It would read, “My Wonder Journey Ends Here.” But who knows whether my Wonder journey will continue on the other side of the galaxy in the middle of the twinkling stars after I die?
Writing books has been a different challenge, especially for someone who has never thought about it before, as I never saw myself as a storyteller. Yet, I am committed to continually questioning things that dig deeper for as long as I move around in this world. I hope my story helps fan the flames of your dreams, which may solve the world’s most dire problems, such as saving lives, climate change, poverty, or help the society around you. Your moving story is all in your hands, either to be a Unicorn or a Dinosaur.
So, keep moving!