It’s hard to believe two men walked on the surface of the earth for the first time 40 years ago today. I was hooked on space flight in second grade, when my mom allowed me to miss class at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School in Chicago to watch coverage of John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth. I was 14 for the Apollo 11 landing and completly entralled. I remember being glued to the TV, soaking in everything that was going on. My mom allowed us to stay up late so we could watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step foot on the moon. What an incredible night that was! I was sure I saw angels on the moon watching over the astronauts as they walked about. Only years later did I think that maybe I saw shadows…but maybe not. And America got to the moon using slide-rules and computers huge and very slow by today’s standards. Less than half of the world’s population was alive in 1969 and many of them don’t remember. My sister, who was 5 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, does not remember a time when manned spaceflight was not a realitiy.

But I think the biggest thing that got America to the moon was a dream; a dream we all believed in, we all wanted. Putting men on the moon was a goal so high it was almost unimaginable. We had no idea how to do it, but some how we knew we were going do it. Today I wish that, as a nation, we had a common dream that would unite us, get us to pull together and bring out the best in each one of us and all of us together. A goal that would make us believe in ourselves.

What if each one of us had a dream so big it was almost unimaginable? What if each one of us had a goal that would bring out the best in us and make us believe in ourselves? What if each one of us had a goal we decided we were going to reach, even though we had no idea how to do it? I think I need a goal like that. Do you?