The Quest to get Home: Billionaires, Submarines and other stuff

“Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Until those immortal words were uttered by Jim Lovell no one was paying much attention to the flight of Apollo 13. We’d been to the moon twice and public interest was already waning. In an instant the world was glued to their television sets wondering if the three astronauts, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert, and Jim Lovell would make it safely back to the earth. People may not have been excited to watch another moon landing, but they wanted to see if NASA could get three men home without landing on the moon.

In 2010 I sat in front of the television set wondering if the thirty-three trapped miners would ever make it out. I had never taken an interest in mining in Chile before this, but now it was big news. The world watched. Could they get air, food, and water to the trapped miners? Would they be able to drill a rescue shaft without collapsing the mine? Sitting in our home we cheered as the first miner was pulled to safety. It was an engineering marvel. Everyone was rescued and made it home.

Five years ago a soccer team ventured into a cave in Thailand. They were kids aged between eleven and sixteen, along with their twenty-five year old coach. A torrential rain fell. The caves flooded. Could they still be alive? The world’s media descended on the region. Even after they were found alive the world held its collective breath. Was rescue possible? Would they get home? In one of the most dramatic rescues of all time all the boys made it out safely, tragically one of the rescue divers lost his life. All but one went home.

Last week the world turned its attention to five people in a makeshift submarine in the Atlantic Ocean. Where were they? Would they survive? Would they make it home? No, they didn’t make it home, they were all lost at sea.

Many, myself included, were asking why was so much time given to last week’s story when hundreds of migrants drowned off the coast of Greece and another thirty-three off the Canary Islands?

I believe the answer is that one of the great human stories is the quest to make it home.

Deep in the human psyche is the sense that we are all on a journey seeking a place to call home. We identify with stories like these. From the expulsion of humanity from the garden in Genesis 3 the quest and longing for home has filled our imagination.

When we are at our best we see hope, we feel the anguish and the pain of those longing to see their loved ones again, we weep with those who weep, and cry tears of joy where there is success. But our shadow selves, our dark side, is like a moth drawn to the flame. We are voyeuristic. Fascinated at the possibility of failure, we can’t look away.

It doesn’t matter to us if it’s NASA astronauts, miners, children, or billionaires, we watch and ask, will they get home?

Tragically the story of migrants simply doesn’t resonate with us the same way. Yes, the tragedy of the migrants is the more important story, but even those of us who point this out are still drawn to the story of getting home. The plight of the migrants deserves our attention even when, especially when, there is no “tragedy” for the plight of displaced people is a tragedy to begin with. Unfortunately all too often, as in the haunting scene from the movie Hotel Rwanda where Paul Rusesabagina says he is glad the journalists have filmed the atrocity because it will force people to sit up and take notice, we mostly respond in the way the reporter, Jack, says we will. “I think if people see this footage they'll say, ‘Oh my God that's horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.” Yes, we can and need to do better.

Yes, billionaires spending a fortune to go dive into the depths of the ocean, or fly into space, is a sign of their egos, pride, and folly. That money could be much better spent on the needs and the plight of the poor in this world.

If we’re ever going to get home, we’ll only get there if we go together and bring everyone along on the journey. There are many issues that deserve our attention, because they are human issues, before any “tragedy” occurs.