How Jack Kennedy Changed Everything

The one thing I find common in all the people I meet is fear. Fear of hunger, so their fridges and freezers are packed with food that literally falls out when you open the doors. I met a woman who lives alone but has two fridges and a chest freezer packed for fear she'll run out of food. Fear of driving so there's lots of warnings when a loved one goes out the door. A lady I met yesterday who's in her late forties has never driven a car. She said she's too afraid.

 Fear of trying something new. Fear of the stranger on the street. Fear of people of color or different customs and dialects. Fear of having too much work. Or not enough. Fear, fear, fear. Listen to people talk and soon you'll discover what they're afraid of.

I was watching some old news footage of a speech President Kennedy gave at Rice University on September 12, 1962 in which he outlined his plans to commit the Nation to the Moon. Behind him was a diverse audience, but mostly men sweltering in the mid-day heat. It was so hot a good portion of the crowd were fanning themselves. One guy kept wiping his face with his handkerchief. Some of the men had hats on; some were smoking cigars or cigarettes.

The Vice President, LBJ, a Texan and used to hot weather, sat placidly in the front row and listened without much show of emotion.  The President sensed the crowd was hot and restless, and at one point joked they should be patient a little longer, as he was the one "doing all the work".

"We choose to go to the moon," the President said. "We choose to go to the moon... (interrupted by applause) we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

As he said this, a man seated directly behind the President shook his head violently in disagreement. I didn't recognize the guy, but I recognized the display of emotion. It was fear.

Kennedy's race for the Moon changed everything. He set in motion a chain of events that revolutionized technology, chemistry, medicine, electronics, and countless other scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. He scoffed at fear, and at those that would keep our Nation earth-bound for fear of the difficulty and hazard of space exploration.

We choose things by natural instinct that are easy. We choose easy because we are afraid of pain. Kennedy showed us a different way to choose. Choose in spite of the pain. You could change everything.