Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. Really? What if you miss the moon and land on Mars? Then you're not among stars. In fact, the closest star to Earth is 93 million miles away. If you shoot for the moon, which is, on average, about 240,000 miles from Earth, and land among the stars then you are way off course.
The author of this quote was famous musician and author Les Brown. Brown believed what you do today will determine what your tomorrows will bring. "You are molding your tomorrow based on what you do today," he says. "You can determine what your future holds based on how much time and energy you spend working on yourself now. Find out what it is you want, and go after it as if your life depended on it. Why? Because it does," says Brown.
This doesn't seem consistent with the notion of shooting for the moon and landing among the stars, does it? Of course, it's a very clever and cute quote, and it looks great on monthly calendars, but it's not the winning attitude that Brown promoted, yet it's his most famous quote.
Dissecting the quote even more, I think of individuals that I've come across who approach their lives this way. It seems as though the people who truly posses the shooting for the moon mentality are never really conscious of who they are and what they're capable of (and not capable of) doing. They also go against what Brown's biggest claim is: taking care of today to better mold your tomorrow. Shooting for the moon is not taking care of today and seeing where it brings you.
Norah Jones sings about this in a different context, but with similar results. From "Shoot the Moon" she sings, "You shoot the moon/and miss completely/and now you're left to face the gloom." This doesn't sound like landing among the stars is a very desirable outcome if we miss the moon.
I'll choose to approach life the way Brown intended according to his legacy, not his misguided quote on my high school English teacher's classroom wall. One of Browns books is called It's not over until you win! The title alone shows that we can't always be content with shooting for the moon as it's some "pie in the sky" and take what's left. No way! Keep going until you get to where you desire to be.
We're all going to fail at something in life, or in life in general. My encouragement is so that you'll keep trying, keep swinging, getting back on the horse, getting up and doing it all again...every time. Don't be content with landing among the stars. After all, if we land among the stars, we're probably too far off course to recognize that, most likely, we're burning.
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This was my second-favorite quote in high school. Thanks for ruining it :)
ReplyDelete"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
ReplyDeleteShoot for the moon at your own risk. If you miss, assuming that your initial and sustained velocities are great enough to bypass solar gravitational influence, you will exceed orbital domain and proceed into extrasolar space, where you will remain for thousands of years. If you continue to proceed at your current velocity, it is unlikely that you will land upon any stars before you drift out of our galaxy. You will float for billions of years through the empty, desolate space until you fall upon another galaxy. If you are lucky, you may land upon a star after ten thousand more years or so. In that case, you will be instantaneously incinerated by radiant and thermal energy as you near the star, then further ravaged by internal nuclear and exothermic reactions once you finally do land upon the star. Your remains will stay within the sun until it is scattered across the galaxy by its supernova or imprisoned eternally after implosion and transformation into a black hole.
If you don't miss, assuming you have a way to remain intact upon collision with the moon, then congratulations. You have made it onto a remote, barren wasteland. In the three minutes that remain of your life before you shrivel up and die from lack of oxygen and minimal atmospheric pressure, you can reflect upon why you decided to shoot for the moon in the first place.