Joy of the Day, Day 60: Seattle and Space X

Yesterday was a dizzying, crushing day. As Space X sent a Falcon 9 rocket hurtling toward the International Space Station, angry, hate-filled mobs hijacked a peaceful protest and wreaked havoc on downtown Seattle.

Last night I spent some time thinking about the ironic concurrence of the Space X launch and the horrific scene in Seattle—how could we soar so high and sink so low in the same 24 hours? I thought about Apollo 11, launched just over 50 years ago, the culmination of a race to space whose timeline almost exactly paralleled the civil rights movement. On the eve of that rocket launch, there was also a protest, led by MLK’s successor Robert Abernathy, to point out the injustice of spending $25 billion to send men to the moon, rather than to address the basic needs of the poor. That protest, however, stayed peaceful, ending with a shaking of hands and a measure of mutual understanding.

As soon as the curfew in Seattle ended this morning, just before dawn, people began to descend on the city with a straightforward yet noble purpose: to clean up the mess, to wash away the graffiti and to pick up the glass; it took so much longer to clean up the mess than to make it. And although in some ways this all feels Sisyphean, like we’re right back where we started a full half-century ago, I felt a spark of joy and a sense of hope this morning as I watched video clips of people springing into action, powered by an unbreakable urge to scrub clean the buildings and to launch into space—to rise up and begin again on a forward, upward trajectory.

Today, the people of Seattle and a successful space launch are my joy. #joyinplace

(Photo from The Seattle Times)