Had a personal "Sputnik Moment" lately? I'm not talking about the kind that President Obama referred to last week in his State of the Union speech, but let's use that analogy for a moment as a place from which to launch a more personal inquiry.
President Obama's reference to our current national "Sputnik Moment" was made in recognition of China's rise as an economic power and the challenge that poses to America's economic dominance in the world. Calling it a "Sputnik Moment" was a call for America to mobilize its resources and re-direct our national goals as we did in 1957 after the U.S.S.R. beat us in the race to space.
That original "Sputnik Moment" was America's wake up call. The government's response was to unleash a national effort to regain our competitive edge with the Soviets that resulted in stepped up missile development and the establishment of NASA. In addition, the U.S. government altered the ways in which it funded research in science, technology and engineering. This ultimately led to the development of the field of microelectronics -- the technology used in today's computers, tablets and smartphones.
Sputnik Moments are not confined to countries, however. They happen in our personal lives as well and by definition, come when we least expect them. Personal Sputnik Moments are those large or small events that jar our sense of reality, perhaps ever so slightly, or land like a major earthquake. One thing is for sure: after you've had one, nothing is ever quite the same.
Sputnik Moments come like surprises that stir things up and force us to reevaluate how we see ourselves and our version of the world. They can have momentary or lasting impact, but they tend to unbutton our buttoned-down version of reality.
Say you just found out you were adopted -- a Sputnik Moment. Or your birth mother contacts you and wants to meet -- a Sputnik Moment. Or the Dad you never knew and thought was long gone turns up unannounced -- a Sputnik Moment. Or you find out your spouse is having an affair -- a Sputnik Moment. Or your son or daughter comes home one day and announces that they're gay -- a Sputnik Moment. Or you just received a diagnosis of a potential life-threatening disease -- a Sputnik Moment.
But these kinds of moments are not always harbingers of bad news. Sputnik Moments can come on the heels of good news too. Say you just won the lottery -- a Sputnik Moment. Or you just got accepted to the college at the top of your list -- a Sputnik Moment. Better yet, say you received a scholarship to that college -- Sputnik Moment. Or you made the debate team, or the varsity squad in your sport. Or the person you'd been wishing and hoping would ask you for a date finally calls and asks you out. Or the person you've fallen in love with tells you he loves you. Or after two years of being unemployed, you finally land a decent job. These are all potential Sputnik Moments, after which nothing is ever the same.
Things can begin to unravel after a Sputnik Moment, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the unraveling produces results you'd long been wanting but just didn't have the courage to go after without this nudge from the universe. Perhaps your child's admission about their sexual orientation finally opened up a new level of honest and authentic communication that wasn't available when he or she was still concealing that information.
Even an admission of infidelity can be the beginning of a new relationship built on a new level of honesty and restored trust. When the wall of denial finally comes crumbling down, and after the emotional content has been expressed, a new realm of possibility becomes available. How will you deal with what you now know?
What's important about a Sputnik Moment is what you do with it in the aftermath. The problem is, we tend to get all caught up in the drama of the story itself and might spend years or decades ruminating over the details, unable to move beyond our interpretation of what happened. We never get to resolution, but instead stay frozen in time.
A Sputnik Moment is like a sudden meltdown. It can occur when you finally realize there are more ways to view life's events than the one interpretation you latched on to and obsessed over for 10 years. A Sputnik Moment can be the realization of the role you played in the unfolding of events. We're often so blinded by our interpretations, we can't accurately see ourselves in the story.
A Sputnik Moment can serve to remove one's blinders, pierce the veil of denial, and place the observer right in the middle of the action instead of at its effect or on the periphery. Separating the facts from the story we craft about them can help one expand their options for how to respond instead of react. What if no one was guilty? What if no one is to blame?
From this vantage point, suppose you accepted that everyone did the best they knew how to do even if they came up miserably short in the process. Suppose you granted grace to all involved, including yourself. Suppose you blessed them, forgave them, forgave yourself, and let go of the frozen emotions you've stored away in a closed up heart. Suppose you saw yourself, over there in them, confused or lacking the courage to do the right thing or be honest in the moment.
Sputnik Moments can open our eyes to a deeper reality about who we are and what's really going on. The truth is, there's nobody else out there. Perhaps our ultimate Sputnik Moment is the realization that we're all in this together, that nobody's going to get out of this alive so we might as well claim our brotherhood and sisterhood and get busy rowing the boat of human kindness, love and compassion. Anybody got a better idea?
What's going on in your private nation in the "Sputnik Moment" department? How have your eyes been opened? What wake up calls have been delivered?
Please leave your thoughts on your personal and/or our collective Sputnik Moments in the comment section below or on my personal blog and website at Rx For The Soul. For personal contact you can reach me at judith@judithrich.com. I love to hear from you!
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Blessings on the path...
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Chester E. Finn, Jr.: A Sputnik Moment for U.S. Education - WSJ.com
State of the Union 2011: Obama's "Sputnik moment" - By Fred Kaplan ...
Obama Calls for a New 'Sputnik Moment' for America
What Exactly Is a 'Sputnik Moment?' | Space.com
Sputnik program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sputnik - The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia
I've been meditating for longer stretches of time; sometimes 4 times a day & from those experiences - I need your deciphering please:)) at the X'es - came my sputniks.
1)I enter the darkness which isn't. It seems I'm nowhere. On leaving, the guardian at the door give me a sword of light & says "use it wisely". X
Sputnik: Clarity! I see past my birth mother's ugliness to a contamination she assiduously nurtures.
2) I'm in huge old cosy farmhouse. It starts raining. Lightning flash brightens the night & the roof starts leaking, only in the 4 corners of the perfectly square ornate ceiling. (Don't laugh!) Hillary Clinton & Michelle Obama use beautiful bottles to collect the 4 streams. Michelle makes me drink one which was delicious, like freshly squeezed green veggie juice. X
Sputnik on "waking": I control my thoughts. I can switch em on and off! Utter silence in my innards.
3) My head with long hair breaks the surface of a lake & I take a deep breath. I'm astride my totem animal Samuel. Surprised to see him. We rise & water jets from his hooves & they've got wings. X
Sputnik: No turning back; debris's been cleared out!
This
http://www.backyardmystic.com/2011/02/my-day-is-a-droplet-of-water/
I just visited your site and left a comment. So happy you stopped by and shared your link. Very lovely offerings from the "Backyard Mystic"...... I look forward to reading more from you.
Blessings,
Judith
Later I was to learn about fusion formed the heavier chemical elements and how this material is spread throughout the universe by nova and sopernovae explosions. This was my aha moment, when I realized that everybody was composed of star stuff, that we all were Starchildren. With this reakization, hating someone because they looked different from me, or believed something different, or spoke a different language or were in any other way different from me seemed to be just a waste of time.
Except for one group of people. Because yiu know that nothing sucks like a Big Orange. Go Big Blue. ;-) Just kidding, even a wildcat loves Rocky Top.
Of course we're all Starchildren...... wonderful share. Thank you so much!
Blessings,
Judith
I always look forward to hearing from you, for the Buddhist perspective that you bring. It's like receiving a "postcard from Buddha"........ these lovely little tweaks and bits of wisdom, dropped like pearls in the garden of our shared thoughts.
For me, it's so completely fascinating and gratifying to witness what readers bring every week to the writings offered here. I feel so blessed and enriched to have you and what you contribute, at this gathering place.
As always, Arithrianos, thank you, grace you, bless you.
Judith
I just love, love, love the concept of finding my "Sputnik Moment"! My huge ah ha came when I realized the man I was engaged to...had two people inside his body...and one of them I had never met until there was a ring on my finger.
My "Sputnik Moment" was when I got on a plane and back to my life. Mercifully, I am a bigger, better stronger person for it!
Bless you for such a great post!
Well, I guess you can thank your lucky stars you had your SM before it was too late. But it must have been a difficult experience. It's really amazing how life serves us just what we need when we need it, even when we think otherwise.
I'm happy that you've "come back to your life" and have no doubt whatsoever that you're stronger for it. You have a light that will never go out, but only shine brighter as you keep on polishing the diamond.
Welcome back! With grace and love,
Judith
Would you believe it flashed on my screen. My first quote for the day.
So many of them... let me see.... OK the latest one. I was reading about Mother Theresa, and came upon her thoughts on love and poverty: "The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."
I sat for an extended period thinking about those who are "left out", who are isolated from the options and opportunities so abundant around us. Often, their choices do contribute to their circumstance, but the lack of guidance and support exacerbates their plight, and through acquiescence, their fate is sealed, as well as the fate of many who follow.
The cycles of ignorance, when broken, are true Sputnik Moments, in which all of us not just can, not just should, but surely must strive for all to experience. When the least of us is reduced by ignorance and stagnation and we turn away or, simply stand and watch, the rest of us are diminished by that anchor of avoidance and apathy.
My sputnik moment? Be aware, and help raise that anchor!
You are a catalyst of love and change... Thank you!
Lawson
Yours is the last comment I'm responding to before going to bed, while the streets of Cairo are rocked with violence and the yearning from the masses to "let my people go". People everywhere want the same thing. We want to be free, to be loved and appreciated, to be valued and treated with respect and kindness.
We are witnessing the breaking of a cycle of ignorance right now in Egypt. And yes, we cannot turn away from what's happening over there for it's also happening everywhere including right here perhaps in a different form. I think we are witnessing a massive collective Sputnik Moment right now when the people of Egypt turn away from decades of repression and demand their freedom.
My prayers to them and to you!
Peacing you,
Judith
I can think of many sputnik moments in my life. Pretty much nothing has worked out as I might have expected. And that's a good thing. Keeps thinking flexible.
I do want to add I disagree with the author's comment there's just our own experience. I think this view is purely selfish and unrealistic no matter how many academics and philosophers may second the view. Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that everybody's experience is equally important (or unimportant)?
Aside from that I thought it was a good blog post.
Thanks for your comment.
However with all due respect, I'd like to clarify my statement that I think you misinterpreted. Here's where I'm coming from with my statement: "there's nobody else out there".....
At the gross physical level, there appear to be almost 7 billion of us inhabiting the planet and at that level, we each have our own experience, none of which is more or less important than anyone else's experience.
At the metta level, everything is connected and there is only Oneness. Living from that perspective would have us see that "we're all in this together, as One, and the only way out for any of us, is for all of us to care about each other. We're seeing that played out on the streets of Egypt today as the people are standing as one even in the face of violence.
At another level, everything we see is a projection of our own minds. Therefore, there is "nobody else out there" but one's self and their own projections. This is very different than saying one person's experience is more important than another's.
I hope this makes sense..........
But last summer, I was driving over the ship channel bridge, and looked out at all those plants stretched to the horizon, and the toxic spew that always emanates from them, and I just thought, "This is insanity. Human beings can't possibly live like this forever. There's not enough oil, the Earth can't tolerate this kind of pollution, we can't breathe this air, we can't drink this water. We're all doomed if we don't find another way to live, without burning the heart of the Earth to live."
I'm not sure where that takes my family, but it's going to take us somewhere, and we're going to live in a different way. We can't fix the Earth, but we can respond to an epiphany.
Here's to knowing that grace and goodness are already yours you as you go "wherever this takes your family". You cannot go wrong or make a mistake. You can only open new doors and create new possibilities, no matter where the road leads you. Trust in the epiphany that started you down this path.
I peace you,
Judith
There are people who seem to think greatest destruction = greatest power. Hopefully that force is not the most powerful.
Today's call feels completely different, although in fact, we may be facing a much larger economic threat from China than the Russians posed to us militarily in the 1950's. Whatever the perceived level of threat, the point is that we can use this moment to make a quantum leap in our collective intention and use it to make the world a better place for ourselves, the Chinese and everyone else.
My Sputnik Moment came later that afternoon. There, standing in the kitchen dressed in her tutu, my daughter was doing ballet, and for 10 min I watched in awe. And when she was done I said smiling, “Sweety, it’s all about you, it’s all about you.” It was my own reference to the day that was earlier. This is what’s really beautiful in my life, I thought. If had walked out of this job there would be no more ballet or piano lessons for her. Take away the recitals and plays I enjoy so much? .…No! Dealing with incompetence became rather small in that moment.
What separates us from those who live in caves and hunt with sharp sticks is our ability to decide, to set our priorities, to choose our fate, and to realize and rejoice in the benefits thereof.
I too, have had the notion to educate a manager with well placed descriptors of incompetence and ignorance, but my ability to evaluate the negative and positive ramifications slowed my tongue, to my and my families benefit. It's about mountains and molehills I guess...
Lawson
I think you mean your awareness and enlightened mind rather than ability to evaluate… Those mountains and molehills take us to new heights. So, no guessing required, it’s true.
Or as the Buddha said, "Everything depends upon everything else."
Congratulations on your Sputnik Moment. Looks like it came in the nick of time!
Grace and blessings to you,
Judith
That of course, is the question, isn't it? "Are we willing to take responsibility and see them for the gifts that they are?'
Based on the commentary here, I'd say these readers get it. But there are many who do not, so we'll keep rowing the boat until they do. I don't know what else to do, frankly, but just keep rowing that boat and inviting everyone to get on board.
I love the wide angle perspective you bring to these conversations. Do come back!
Love and blessings,
Judith
So let's suppose I saw myself over there in them, confused or lacking the courage to do the right thing or be honest in the moment.
Hmmm. Something's not quite right here. I usually make a big point out of never being confused and never being dishonest in the moment. So it must be either I was lacking the courage to do the right thing or... I never saw myself over there in them.
Or maybe I was lacking the courage to do the right thing because whenever I saw myself over there in them I was being dishonest in the moment or confused.
Which brings us to what probably really happened, most of the time: no one was to blame.
It was all just a big mess and time for a Sputnik moment for everybody.
Da capo. Let's see if we can get this right.
Da Capo indeed... Da Capo al fine. :)
Lawson
I think your final conclusion is closer to the truth, so here, here! A round of Sputnik Moments for everyone! It's on me.........
I love the Sputnik Moments! In the Nation of Anne, the sudden aging of my father has been in the Sputnik realm. As has that I have a larger number of wedding ceremonies to design and officiate in 2011 than in any previous year.
Wake up calls have been to further the surrender to my intuitive guidance on a daily basis, and learn a whole lot more about creating better all round health. Deepening my faith and trust in the loving universe that supports me. I love your: "get busy rowing the boat of human kindness, love and compassion." Pop empathy in there too!
I have a feeling that Sputnik Moments are truly to be celebrated. It is not what happens that counts, but what we do with what happens.
Love and appreciation as always,
Anne
It sounds like the universe is nudging you in a very good direction and what more, you're trusting and following its guidance.
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life....." that's my mantra these days. Every day is a chance to walk in faith and trust that all is well, no matter what. I'm getting lots of opportunities to be in this practice right along with you.
Such good news about the increase in your wedding business. My youngest daughter is getting married in March. Wish you were on this side of the pond so you could officiate. Meanwhile, got any tips for the mother of the bride? I need some "toast" material!
Grace and blessings to you,
Judith
That's all!
I wish I were with you.... perhaps I will be in Spirit!
You say —Sometimes the unravelling produces results you'd long been wanting... YES, absolutely!
I slammed a door last night, admittedly a strong wind helped but it was all me after telling off my mother. I had to figure out why I was so hot and vibrating. I knew her sly comment wasn’t the reason.
After 3 hours ruminating in the dark, I got it. What I love about myself is that I don't hold grudges, spare myself or say deliberately hurtful words in a fit of anger, probably because I was on the receiving end for 2 decades.
After identifying the real reason (her again) from a week ago, I meditated, slept and woke with the thought "I peace you". Thank U SShaw90!
I apologised to them this morning for the door biz. Any sort of violence is an anathema to me. I informed them that I refused to lower myself to their level. Such clarity! As you say dear Judith - I graced them, forgave them all and myself because my heart is alight.
I understand, finally. They are lost, terribly bewildered, lack self-respect and are unable to be honest for any reason. I have finally irrevocably let go.
Gosh woman, you did IT again.
I LOVE you☺ I really mean that.
Thanks
Catherine
LifeChangeStarts..When?
The very toughest, without a doubt, are those moments where reason, emotion, obligation, trust, and disagreement are within the family.
Not being a slave to the past by letting go... that's the right road! Now is all you have! :)
Lawson
I saw it all. Unfortunately, I've been the one seeing things and people as they are and taking care of them in spite of it all because that's what families do for each other. Notwithstanding the fact that I was literally beaten into doing all that I did i.e. being the mother to mother, all siblings and all the pets.
I thought I had let go because I was still feeling such angst about it despite being upfront and crystal clear. They had forgotten about that because my radar was usually turned on others because I knew them in all their ugliness and I kept them safe and they knew it. In a few words, I felt sorry for her in particular, and she worked it.
I cobbled things together to get me through until I could quietly leave when I find a job but my soul's needs take precedence it seems and has thus precipitated my forward movements in 6 words yesterday "don't tell me what to do" and a powerful slamming door to underline it.
WOW!
Cheers
Catherine
I would hazard the 'Sputnik'ed to watch for the fallback position of competitiveness and aggressiveness and attempt to find where they were wounded, as this attitude affords the insight, and transformation, as well as proper re-orientation which the Sputnik moment is demanding.
(After all, it ain't about going off into 'Space' first, but who can bring the proper spiritual attitude into material reality, no?)
All the Best!
Good point! Thank you........
All the best right back to you,
Judith