The most important thing I learned on the Quest, I didn’t learn from the scientists

People assume I went to collect the science. I did collect it. But when somebody asks me what the most important thing I learned was, I always answer the same way: it was not something I learned from any of those brilliant people. It was something I learned from my son.

For the first six months we had tensions almost every week — two people in each other’s company every hour of every day. Every time it happened I was devastated, and I wanted it sat down and solved that same evening. Then I noticed that Alek, fifteen minutes after a fight, was behaving as though nothing had happened. Because to him, nothing had.

It took me a while to try it. When I did, it changed the whole year.

If two people love each other and want the best for each other, that is more than enough. Twenty per cent of the disagreements are worth sitting down for. The other eighty per cent you can let go of, and live.

Months later I told all of that to Srikumar Rao, in his house on Long Island, and said that even with nothing else from the journey, we had already succeeded. He said: “That’s a bonus.”

I have written the whole story — the year, the hundred people, what my son taught me, and the answer Srikumar gave when I asked him how to make people want to live better lives. It is the first article in a new weekly series, and it is published on our new home:

Read it here →

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