Crews

as seen on the outside of an adorable
kids' appliance-cardboard-box fort

I'm still so uplifted by the crew from Artemis II. 

Fresh from space, they spoke so eloquently and warmly about each other and their team experience, their lifework, an incredible legacy.  

Moved, Astronaut Christina Hammock Koch praised her team, describing the four of them surviving and working and relying on each other as "inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked." She continued, saying this about observing "tiny Earth...a lifeboat [suspended in] the blackness...I know one new thing...Planet Earth: You. Are. A. Crew." 

Inspiring. I heard her, and I needed to hear it. Dear friends, we are a crew, but let's be honest, back here on Earth, our planet is not so tiny. And unlike those astronauts hurtling through space for ten days on a mission, we don't have to be inescapably joined to recognize our value to each other. To me, her key word was dutiful. 

Think of children making forts from their cardboard boxes and couch cushions. Remember those fun spaces? They felt novel and energizing, like drawing a magic circle around your squad, your peeps, your crew. But then it happens...someone is excluded, or the older siblings would arrive... (mean? jealous? suspicious? power-hungry? insecure? intolerant? controlling? bored?) and for whatever stupid reason, the fort is destroyed.

We humans are messy, complicated, fearful, puzzling—essentially children at times—and there's no possible way we can all belong at once to one crew. Yet most of us know we have a fundamental duty to each other and when we live in service to our own and others' well-being, there can be more peace among our crews, among us all.