“But up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time. And you wake up usually in the mornings, just the way the track of your orbit goes, over the Middle East and over North Africa. As you eat breakfast you look out the window as you’re going past, and there’s the Mediterranean area, Greece and Rome and North Africa and the Sinai, that whole area. And you realize that in one glance what you’re seeing is what was the whole history of man for years – the cradle of civilization.

And a little later on, your friend, again one of those same neighbours, the person next to you, goes out to the moon. And now he looks back and he sees the Earth not as something big, where he can see the beautiful details, but now he sees the Earth as a small thing out there. And the contrast between that bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and the black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through, and the size of it, the significance of it. It is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you – all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.

And you realize from that perspective that you’ve changed, that there’s something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was. And then you look back on the time you were outside on that EVA and on those few moments that you could take, because a camera malfunctioned, to think about what was happening. And you recall staring out there at the spectacle that went before your eyes, because now you’re no longer inside something with a window looking out at a picture. Now you’re out there and there are no frames, there are no limits, there are no boundaries.

You’re really out there, going 25,000 miles an hour, ripping through space, a vacuum. And there’s not a sound. There’s a silence the depth of which you’ve never experienced before, and that silence contrasts so markedly with the scenery you’re seeing and with the speed with which you know you’re moving. And you think about what you’re experiencing and why. Do you deserve this, this fantastic experience? Have you earned this in some way? Are you separated out to be touched by God, to have some special experience that others cannot have?

 And you know the answer to that is no.

 There’s nothing that you’ve done that deserves that, that earned that; it’s not a special thing for you. You know very well at that moment, and it comes through to you so powerfully, that you’re the sensing element for man. You look down and see the surface of that globe that you’ve lived on all this time, and you know all those people down there and they are like you, they are you – and somehow you represent them. You are up there as the sensing element, that point out on the end, and that’s a humbling feeling. It’s a feeling that says you have a responsibility. It’s not for yourself. The eye that doesn’t see doesn’t do justice to the body. That’s why it’s there; that’s why you are out there. And somehow you recognize that you’re a piece of this total life. And you’re out there on that forefront and you have to bring that back somehow. And that becomes a rather special responsibility and it tells you something about your relationship with this thing we call life.” So that’s a change. That’s something new. And when you come back there’s a difference in that world now. There’s a difference in that relationship between you and that planet and you and all those other forms of life on that planet, because you’ve had that kind of experience. It’s a difference and it’s so precious. And all through this I’ve used the word “you” because it’s not me, it’s not Dave Scott, it’s not Dick Gordon, Pete Conrad, John Glenn – it’s you, it’s we.

 It’s life that’s had that experience.”

“I have stood at the bedside of maybe thousands of people as they took their last breath. What people say in their final moments is pretty important – they don’t mess around. Nobody has ever said “bring me my trophies I want to look at them one more time”, or even “bring me my college graduation certificate I want to look at it one more time”.

When people are dying and they know their time is short, what they want in the room is not things or trophies or achievement.

What they want are the people they love.

Eventually we all figure out that it’s all about love – It’s all about relationships.

I just pray you’ll figure it out a whole lot sooner.”