We Choose Each Other
Reflections on Artemis II, the solar eclipse, and the brave, daily decision to choose connection over distance.
Ever since Orion launched into space, our family has been transfixed.
We’ve had the NASA live feed running constantly — in the car, in the kitchen while cooking dinner, humming in the background as we moved through our days. We listened as they reflected on seeing Earth from the vicinity of the Moon — a precious blue crescent suspended in infinite darkness. We laughed as they troubleshot their space toilet and worked on liquid waste disposal — including one memorable moment when the crew vented liquid waste into space, and it floated past the window like a shower of glowing gems. We heard their voices fill with something that can only be described as childlike wonder when they saw the Moon up close and watched a solar eclipse from space.
I was in 4th grade when the Challenger explosion happened. Our class watched it live on television — the excitement, and then the silence, and then the horror as we began to understand what we had just witnessed. It’s one of those memories that never fully leaves you.
As we all sat together and watched the launch on April 1st, my wife and I felt a quiet apprehension. “Please let them make it up safely,” we kept repeating silently. There is a particular kind of fear that parents know well: the fear of your child’s innocence being taken by something you cannot control.
When Orion cleared the tower and climbed into the sky, we exhaled.
Nine days later, as the Orion capsule — named Integrity by its crew — began reentry into the atmosphere, we huddled together again to witness the end of this historic mission. We paused and said a prayer. Four human beings were about to come home, traveling at nearly 25,000 miles per hour, wrapped in a heat shield facing temperatures hotter than lava, trusting the work of thousands of people. That kind of courage deserves a prayer.
Then the communications blackout. Six long minutes when no one on Earth could reach them.
And then — the parachutes.
When those three main parachutes bloomed open on the screen, we erupted. Cheering, laughing, hugging. Tears of joy and relief mixed with wonder and inspiration. There is something primal about watching a human being attempt the seemingly impossible — and succeed. The relief is almost physical.
The four astronauts — Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen — had just completed humanity’s farthest journey from Earth since Apollo. They flew around the Moon. They broke records. They carried our species a little further into the cosmos than we had ever gone before and opened our minds to a universe of possibility.
A Path of Totality
I’ve been thinking about what this mission stirred in me, and I keep coming back to the solar eclipse of 2024.
People traveled hundreds of miles to stand in the path of totality. I remember working at the White House that day and watching the entire building empty out onto West Executive Drive — people of all different backgrounds, standing shoulder to shoulder, gasping together.
There is something about a shared moment of wonder that can quiet, if only for a moment, everything that divides us.
Artemis II did that again. In living rooms and school hallways and offices across the country — and across the world — people looked up. Together.
At a time when the world feels so heavy, we need more wonder. Not to distract us from the challenges at hand. But to remind us of what we are capable of feeling — the awe, the hope, the catch in the throat when something is genuinely, undeniably beautiful.
Our instincts for wonder and togetherness aren’t gone. Artemis proved it. They are simply waiting to be awakened.
A Simple Declaration
What will stay with me longest isn’t the spectacle of the launch or the drama of reentry. It’s something astronaut Christina Koch said — words so simple and so true that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them since.
After all the places they had traveled, after all the wonders they had seen, she made this declaration:
“We choose Earth. We choose each other.”
Koch’s words are a call back. Back to each other. Back to this small, beautiful, imperiled planet we share.
We choose Earth. We choose each other.
I want to sit with that phrase because I don’t think it means what it might first appear to mean. It is not a passive sentiment. It is not something you do once and then move on. Choosing each other is a decision we have to make every single day — especially when it’s hard. Especially when the forces around us are pulling us apart, turning us against one another, making it feel easier and safer to withdraw into our corners.
To choose each other anyway — that is the harder, braver thing. That is what those four astronauts reminded us from 250,000 miles away.
The Choice Before Us
Underneath the noise and the outrage and the exhaustion that so many of us feel, I believe most people are starving for the same things: meaning, connection, and the sense that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
Artemis II offered all three in a single evening.
The night the astronauts returned, our family sat together in a living room and prayed for four strangers. And when the parachutes opened, we cheered like it was our own family coming home. I know we weren’t alone.
Our instinct — to care, to hope, to rejoice together — is not gone. It is very much alive.
We just have to choose it.
Every day. Every moment.
We choose Earth. We choose each other.
What did the Artemis II mission mean to you? I’d love to hear in the comments.
The photos are stunning. So are your words. BUT I am in the “opportunity cost” camp of those who feel the $ could be better spent. How many could be fed, cared for, etc? As Marvin Gaye sang, “rockets, moonshots / spend it on the have-nots.” Or Bob Marley: “They’re sailing in their ego trip / blast off on their space ship / million miles from reality / don’t care for you don’t care for me.” There are many more examples, but the moral message is clear enough. Thank you.
Love this V!!! This came at just the right moment! We choose hope and we choose eachother ❤️