Thursday November 6th, 2014. The day my life changed forever.
Now when someone says they have undergone a life-altering event...most people think of some sort of major loss or gain, for better or worse. The death of a loved one, the end of a serious relationship, being diagnosed with a major disease, etc. I'm sure that if you've read the title of this piece, you already know where I'm heading with this. Yes, it's true. One of the most significant events to have ever occurred to me in the short time I have been here on this earth is the simple viewing of a film. Now I have had many life-altering events occur in my life...some good and others not so good. I tend not to look at these types of situations (or any type of situation really) as "good" or "bad". Rather, I judge the severity of the event based on how much impact it had on my life, and what I was able to learn from it in order to improve myself as a human being...as well as any resulting negative effects that might have reared their ugly head down the road when I was least expecting. Of all the life changing things that has ever happened to me, however, there has been none more impactful than the first time I laid eyes on the glorious film that is Interstellar.
I know, it sounds silly right? Films can impact people in a variety of ways, but how is it possible for a film to affect someone's life so much, that their perception of life, cognitive capabilities, and spirituality are all permanently altered? Well I'm here to tell you that it is indeed possible, because it happened to me. Let me explain.
Before I saw the movie Interstellar I was a very different person. Growing up, I had never been very interested in math or science. In fact, I loathed it. I constantly under-performed in all of my K-12 math and science courses, despite my relatively good grades in every other subject. There was just something about numbers and scientific theory that had a way of putting me to sleep. I also grew up a heavy reader, and I had always thought my destiny would lie in the realm of literature and the arts. I was always hailed as an extremely gifted writer by my teachers, and English/Composition were always classes I excelled at. I commonly wrote poetry in my free time, and soon enough, my love for literature and composition extended to other forms of story-telling such as film and theater. I spent a year taking film study courses at my high school, and entered an independent study my senior year...writing and filming various indie projects, including a 90-minute documentary about my high-school's cross country team. I guess you could say I was "right-brained".
I never had some epiphany as a child about what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I was little, I always told my mom that I wanted to be the next great author, but she always warned me that they made no money...driving me away from that idea. A similar situation occurred my senior year. I had formed the loose idea that I wanted to become a university-level literature professor and spend the rest of my life studying the arts and perhaps even creating works of my own. When I expressed this to an esteemed member of my family, however, I was hopelessly shot down and told that it was a silly idea. This crushed me, and I was left confused and dissolutioned with the nature of reality and what was possible in life. I was constantly being told that the one thing I grew up loving, wasn't profitable enough to make a decent living. If I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self to not listen to them. If life and experience has taught me anything...it's that whatever you can visualize in your mind is absolutely attainable. Anything. Alas, time-travel hasn't been invented yet, so i'll have to make do. With graduation looming, the time had come to seriously consider my path in life. To be honest, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted out of life, and so like every confused college freshman in the world...I declared myself a business major.
I received an athletic scholarship to run cross country at a small private college called Madonna University, and throughout the duration of my first semester in college, I struggled to juggle the immense commitment that college athletics demands, the increased workload of university academia, and the responsibilities that come with being the staff supervisor at my local movie theater. The only thing really getting me through that trying first semester was the release of my favorite director's latest film...Interstellar. Getting hyped for films was nothing new to me...being a mega-fan of things such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of The Rings, comics, and comic book films and all. However, the hype for this film was different. I remember eagerly waiting for the release of each trailer, and being absolutely mystified by them when they finally did. To this day, there haven't been any trailers that have come close to making me feel the way those trailers did...and I didn't even like science! Perhaps it was my love and adoration of Christopher Nolan (my all-time favorite director), or maybe it was the mind-boggling sight of a live-action wormhole. Either way, I knew from the get-go that this film would be something special.
This trailer, for example, gets me more hype than any superhero movie trailer out there...and for me, that's saying something. Especially for a hater of science (at the time, of course)
There is just something about Michael Cain's monologue during that trailer that just sounds right. We are constantly being berated by the media about climate change and the idea that we have already damaged the earth beyond repair. This trailer spoke to me in ways no form of media had ever done before.
Beyond the hype, however, is an even more inspirational trailer...and it will forever be my favorite of all time. I was going though a tough transition period in life when I first saw this trailer, and it will always mean something special to me. If I ever need any extra motivation...I watch this. At a time when I, as well as the United States, were in need of direction, this trailer could not have come at a better time.
"Perhaps we have forgotten...that we are still pioneers, and that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us...that our destiny lies above us."
Perhaps we HAVE forgotten the power we hold within ourselves as a collective human race. Perhaps we have lost our drive and motivation for greatness and replaced it with hate and bigotry. I can never say for sure, but what I can say is that this moved me. Deeply. It changed something in me, and all of a sudden I became curious about space. I started to look into Apollo missions, and everything NASA has done and plans to do. I discovered a company called SpaceX (a much more obscure and laughed-at company at the time) that was planning to achieve incredible things. I learned about the glory of our galaxy and the mysteries of the universe. Suddenly science wasn't so intimidating or complex. With just a few short trailers, Nolan had managed to shift the entire way I see the world. I see a world where science and art can come together and achieve great things...as Nolan has done with his film. Art is a way of describing reality through the artist's mind and consciousness, and science is a way of describing reality through the scientist's objective observations and recorded data. Either way, they are both trying to do the same thing. If their ideas were to merge and word together, both sides could benefit greatly.
As I walked into that theater Thursday November 6th, 2014, I was just simply a kid who was really excited about seeing a truly great work of art. I remember buzzing with excitement as I sat next to my best friend at the time who often watched films with me and engaged me in analysis afterwords. As the lights dimmed and the opening credits flashed across the screen, I settled into my seat to witness what would be the most incredible experience of my life.
As I walked out of that theater Thursday November 6th, 2014, I felt as if I was in a trance. I remember my mind being blank and my body lethargic...perhaps due to the immense processing power that was being taken up by my brain's attempt to break down what I had just witnessed. I still can't quite put into words what exactly about that film changed me so much, but it did. Perhaps it was the idea posed in the film that love is just part of a higher dimension that we can't actually perceive...that we can still love people who have been dead for years, even though it has no evolutionary utility. Perhaps it was the celestial objects that were portrayed with such a high degree of scientific accuracy. Perhaps it was the impeccable direction of Christopher Nolan mixed with the powerful acting of Matthew Mcconaughey. It honestly probably was a mixture of all those things...along with my own thoughts and emotions as pertaining to the status and future of the human race. I had always wondered as a kid why we never went deeper into space. Why wasn't that something we wanted to accomplish a race? Then I grew older and learned of the horrors of monetary profit and corporate greed, and I understood. I grew bitter about it. I knew we were wasting our human potential...I just couldn't find a way to communicate my feelings on the subject. I eventually gave up, and those thoughts and ideas were buried deep within my soul...until I saw this film.
I realized that this movie had manged to dig up my old feelings of childish wonder and curiosity. It managed to get me really thinking again...about why we couldn't do better as a race. Why do we fight and squabble among ourselves here on this speck of dust we call earth. I love this planet just as much as anyone else. It's grandiose and beautiful and mystical...but looking only at earth when we have the entire universe to marvel at would be equivalent to going to a beach and only marveling at the beauty of a grain of sand. We needed to aim bigger. We needed to do better. If we didn't, I feared the earth would end up like it did in Interstellar...barren, desolate, and full of dying unhappy people. I figured if no one else would listen to me...then I would just take it upon myself to contribute my part in furthering the development of the human race.
It was on this day, that I decided to devote my life to learning about math, science, technology, and how they can be integrated with art to create beautiful, useful, inspiring, and revolutionary things. I started to read everything on those subjects, but by far my favorite was still theoretical physics and the mysteries of space. I knew I wanted to be involved with space somehow...but I wasn't sure how. After months of flying through books and learning, I made a decision. I wanted to become an astronaut. I could be qualified...I have all the physical characteristics and mental/physical endurance to make it...all I needed was the intellectual qualities. NASA says on their website that an engineering degree, followed by three years of experience, was good enough to be considered for the position, and I decided it was good enough for me. I decided to become an engineer. I switched my major the next day and made the necessary arrangements in order to transfer to a more qualified engineering college the following semester. I was gonna be an engineer. I was going to space.
Fast forward three and a half years and we reach the current version of myself. A lot has happened to me during that time. A lot can happen in 3 years, as most of you can confirm...especially in college. I have gone through the things that needed to happen in order for me to have evolved into this amazing version of myself I currently find myself living through. Throughout these trials and tribulations, I have entertained the possibilities of multiple paths that I could travel down, in terms of career and lifestyle. However, the two remaining constants throughout all of this change and confusion was my love for art and expression, and my hunger for scientific knowledge. I have always wanted (and still do) to show people that they can work together in the most glorious ways. I believe that if people can at least come to see this...it could cause a dramatic shift in the way we perceive the world and our place in the universe.
I have been through some of the hardest classes you can take as an undergraduate college student. I have fabricated a working solar car out of a 2-liter pop bottle and a homemade circuit. I have programmed at some of the deepest levels of computer architecture. I have transformed my apartment into a technological marvel and am working on improving it every day. I can tear apart almost any appliance and understand what is happening on the inside...and probably put it back together again. I have been forged in the fires of difficulty and struggle...not only in the educational realm, but in the personal and spiritual realm as well. I have been built up, torn down, and made anew...more than once. I have succeeded and I have failed. Throughout all of these up and downs, however, one thing hasn't changed.
This all started with a film.
One little simple film called Interstellar. Many people may not have even heard of it. Some people have seen it and probably think it was just another sci-fi thriller. Others may think of it as a pretentious and far-out representation of the current state of humanity. That all may be true, but to me this will always be the film that changed my life. It made me see the good in humanity, and it helped me glimpse what we are truly capable of. I know because I have pretty much lived in a building full of some of the most brilliant people on earth for the past 3 years. We can do more. We can do better. We will do better.
Oh...and yes I still plan on going to space.
- SAF