From faith to trust : the Moonwalker effect

Do you believe that someone walked on the Moon ? I do not believe it : I trust that as […]

Do you believe that someone walked on the Moon ? I do not believe it : I trust that as a fact.

Four years back, my company held the first prestigious IT event of a serie (USI). The closing keynote speaker was Neil Armstrong, the man who did the first step on the moon on year 1969. Repose in peace, Neil. His talk was a moment of pure emotion, all of us emotional to tears in front of the greatest adventurer ever, and the guy was as impressed as us of being here, in a small attendance. A hero to all of us, with all the kindness and humility you could hope for.

About the substance of the speach, you probably heard some people saying a group of men or women can catch the moon if they want to ? Armstrong did not tell it : he testified on it. Breakthrough in my mind.

 

Before seeing him, the fact that someone walked on the moon was theoretical. I had to believe it, that was a matter of faith. A faith in the american government honesty, for example, a faith that a fake would have been called after so many years. Some still not believe it, and who can blame them ? Do any of us get on the moon ? Armstrong says he did. And as of now, to me and to all people that met him, it’s a matter of trust. Was he telling the truth ? Do I trust this guy ? I do. I even took the opportunity to raise him a question (how does the moon ground feel ?), and got an unprepared answer (5cm of dust, then hard rock ; the flag was sustained by stones, could not be hammered into the ground).

You know the first time you look at the ground from really high, like in a plane, and the earth look curved ? It’s an epiphany, your perception brings body to a theory : yes, Earth is round, it’s a planet. The same epiphany, bigger, happened to me back there. In my mind, many ideas became like practical facts in a snap, and I realize before that they were just belief, even when led by science experimentations or my own observations.

Now I trust Neil that :

  • the Moon exists ! it’s not a picture in the sky, it’s a real satellite of our planet. I’ve seen the guy’s feet that touched the moon ground.
  • mankind was able to build a ship, something not far from a washing machine, as I’ve found an old apollo capsule I saw once, but airproof enough to have men wonder in the space until they reach the moon. Absolutely crazy.

I remember someone asking me once about the need to attend a conference while many of its sessions were available online (the case was for USI). There’s an answer there : because you can go from believing to trusting, which is much more powerful impulse in life.

Lead me to a lesson of life tonight : if I feel a positive resonance from someone’s experience I read/watch on the web, is it enough ? If I want her discovery to really impenetrate my life, maybe I need to arrange real life meeting, getting from faith to truth about the experience she relates. May be I’ll also find that the influencer is unsure, or lying, but what if not ?

That’s my proposal for today : why not doing yourself a gift and go meet your influencers in real life ?

Tags: Conference, Moon, Neil Armstrong, Trust