At the age of 60, I can still remember man’s first walk on the moon. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this historic event, I think back to watching the walk on TV in the wee hours of the morning. My memory of it is more faint than it used to be, but it is there, because the event was so spectacular.
Although it still boggles the mind to think of a man walking on an object some 250,000 miles from the earth, what fascinates me even more is how it came about. We owe this historic event to the vision and leadership of President John Kennedy. Of course we also owe it to the thousands of people who actually made it happen, but it would never have happened without Kennedy’s vision and leadership.
We should all be inspired by Kennedy’s example, and should try to apply it in our lives. We are all leaders. Some of us are leaders of large corporations, some of small organizations, and some of us co-lead a family. Some of us lead only ourselves. But, make no mistake, we are all leaders.
This is something to keep in mind in these times when so many are struggling and when so many have lost their ability to dream. While circumstances can dampen our ability to dream, we should never stop dreaming. When you latch on to a dream and make a commitment to it, things happen.
Often the “secondary benefits” of implementing a vision can exceed accomplishing the vision itself. In the case of our landing men on the moon, the secondary benefits are enormous. Even cooking a meal was improved by it, because teflon came into existence as a result of materials research in support of the space program. And, it’s hard to imagine how much farther behind we would be in the electronics area had it not been for the space program. It helped take expensive transistors and make them cheaper and smaller and contributed to the development of the advanced computing chips that we now take for granted.
So, as we use this day to reflect celebrate the 40th anniversary of men walking on the moon, let us all use it as inspiration for our own leadership.