What do a Tuscan vintner, the crew of Artemis II, and Marcus Aurelius have in common?
They tell the same story. From very different times and distances.
Start with the vintner. We sat with one in Tuscany whose soil still holds salt from back when the whole region was ocean floor millions of years ago. You could taste it in the glass. The sea left. The salt stayed.
We toured a few hours south, whole cities sit under Vesuvius, buried in a single afternoon in the middle of an ordinary day. The land keeps eerie records on everyone who was sure they owned it.
Now the astronaut. This spring four people flew around the moon and came home, farther from Earth than any humans have ever been. Looking back at our planet, small and alone in all that black, Christina Koch said one thing she now knew for certain.
“Planet Earth, you are a crew.”
Here is the part that stuck. From that far out, you cannot see the crew. You cannot see a single person, or a single border. You just see one blue thing holding everyone.
Up close you lose the planet. But you finally see the crew. The person across the table. The one having a hard week. The one you were ready to write off.
Which brings us to the emperor. Marcus Aurelius got there almost two thousand years ago. We were made to work together, he wrote, like hands and feet and eyes. The resentment is the malfunction, not the other person.
A vanished ocean. A buried city. A trip around the moon. A journal kept two thousand years ago.
None of it lasts. Not the borders, not the crew, not even the sea.
The difference is the borders were never real. The crew is. Briefly, and that is the whole point.
You are a crew. Not for long. Be a good one while you can.
#ChipChats #Leadership #Perspective #Stoicism #ArtemisII