North Star Writers Group

An American businesswoman from Plano, Texas — who watched Star Trek as a child in her native Iran and dreamed of flying to the stars — is at last living that dream. Anousheh Ansari is now aboard a Soyuz space capsule and should reach the International Space Station by mid-week. She is the first female private space explorer.

Anousheh’s magnificent journey is personal for me. I helped her with public relations at her first company back in the late 1990s, and am playing a minor role now in public relations for her new business.

That’s not why I write about her space exploration. I do so in part because I have rarely seen or met anyone with more determination and willingness to take huge risks. I write also because Anousheh hopes her remarkable flight will inspire others, especially girls and women, to move past barriers to accomplish their hearts’ desires. Amen to that.

Anousheh wants to reawaken interest in and support for space exploration, which she sees as critical to the survival of humankind. I cannot argue with her assessment. It may well be that at some point, perhaps sooner than we realize, we will need to break our longstanding bond with this planet in order to find more critical resources and places to live. (Read more about this at Anousheh’s blog: www.anoushehansari.com.)

I write primarily because Anousheh’s high-profile space mission stands in stark contrast to the unheralded journeys we human beings sometimes undertake to a frontier that is hidden yet equally important to us. I refer to the sojourn of spiritual and emotional healing and self-awareness. This type of mission garners no accolades and little, if any, attention from others.

Outer space is, for me, no longer the final frontier. Instead, my definition of that final boundary is the intangible inner realms of self. My idea of exploration is a voyage into our hearts and spirits—into the essence of our being.

Being is not doing. Being is being kind or caring. Being is also being full of self-loathing or hatred, of fear and prejudice. Being is being our true selves and embodying personal truths. Are we always trying to be what we fear others expect us to be? Do we even have a clue about our personal truths or do we believe whatever we are told about ourselves?

We will never find answers to the ultimate riddle of self outside of self. In fact, we won’t find such answers in any physical location. The truth about self isn’t out there somewhere. It’s inside each and every one of us. We really do have our answers within, yet too many of us keep looking for self in others or in our actions, instead of in our being.

And if more of us don’t start searching for greater self-awareness, exploring for our true being, we will remain at odds with self and with others and live neither long nor prosper. As within, so without is one of my strongest beliefs.

If we go to space in our current lack of self-awareness, we most likely will end up spreading the problems we have on Earth all across the stars. Pollution is just one example. We have already exported waste in the form of “space junk” from moon landings and cast-off debris in orbit around the planet.

Even worse, published reports indicate that some quarters of the Bush administration have pushed to drop nuclear bombs on Anousheh’s native country. Now consider a nuclear exchange on an interplanetary basis. The devastation is beyond my feeble imagination. It’s too horrifying even to contemplate.

Anousheh’s mission to space represents the best and highest of human hopes. She wants to inspire nothing but good for all of us. I salute her courage and pray for her safe return, and I pray also that more of us will value that quiet inner courage so that our species may take a peaceful place among the universe’s inhabitants.

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