Preventable disaster.

Space Shuttle Challenger has been on my mind lately. Last week Hector Carrillo did a live recording from Florida, experiencing cold temperatures there like the rest of the country. I attended six nightly online creativity workshops organized by Erin Mallon, narrator, writer, and podcast host. I now feel a familiar, swelling creative energy akin, in my metaphorical mind, to that housed in solid rocket boosters. Talking animatedly with Friend Donna the other day, I brought up Challenger and she asked me why, for such joyous and productive excitement, I choose a metaphor that’s one of the greatest tragedies of a generation?

Huh. Fascinating.

At first I thought it was just because Challenger was such a quintessential and iconic image of the space program in general, and growing up with rocket images all over the house [Ba worked for Lockheed Martin on the Shuttle Payload Integration Contract, he told me tonight when I requested a photo of the photo from home], I just pulled on those memories as convenient analogy. I had not ascribed any conscious meaning or relationship to the shuttle’s ultimate demise. I was ready to shrug off Donna’s question as peripheral to my creative journey. She prodded me gently, though, to engage some cosmic curiosity and explore further. Speaking of comic: Today, January 28, is the 38th anniversary of the Challenger explosion in 1986. 

For those too young to remember, the night before Challenger launched from Cape Canaveral that January day, temperatures dipped far below freezing. Engineers at Morton Thiokol, manufacturer of the O-rings that served essentially as gasket seals for the rocket boosters, advocated strenuously to delay the launch. They knew that temperatures that low would stiffen the rings, making them contract and fail, causing fuel leakage, uncontrolled combustion, and inevitable disaster. Bob Ebeling sounded the alarm first. Despite his and his colleagues’ presentations and advocacy, NASA elected to launch, and seven amazing people lost their lives.

Eventually Donna and I got to the bottom line Challenger question for my creativity and writing: ”What’s your O-ring?” OH, SO fascinating! I spent the next 24 hours and a good portion of my morning pages (21 consecutive days as of today) yesterday processing… I bet more insights emerge this week and beyond. Thus far it’s mostly more questions and a few vaguely related ideas, that apply to more than just my book project:

Where is there vulnerability where stability is assumed and taken for granted?
How can I detect it? Where are alarms sounding that I ignore because I don’t want to delay something that I want or expect? What realities am I denying to advance an agenda, but that put that very agenda at risk for abject failure because I deny them?

Booster energy as book energy: What happens when it leaks or emits inappropriately, and under which circumstances? What would that look like? Is it already happening?

Conditions and consequences: The parameters for normal function in the body are remarkably narrow. I have always marveled at how a person can not only survive, but function highly for prolonged periods, with multiple systems operating wildly outside of those parameters. Nature compensates automatically, elegantly. But there is always some cost, and compensatory mechanisms can only last so long before the system crashes. So for my writing, what are ideal and acceptable conditions for creative work to occur and thrive? How can I establish and maintain those conditions, monitor for derangement, and adjust accordingly? What costs are worth paying, for what reward and value, for how long? How can I know when I need to delay or even abort? 

The O-rings were only one part of a highly complex and integrated machine. Each part of any system has its own unique parameters of function, and is also inextricably linked to every other part. Derangement and compensation in one part inevitably affects the whole of parts in predictable and yet nuanced ways. How elastic is each part’s accommodation capacity, within and outside of its normal functional range? When function is impaired, what complex domino effect does that create, with what consequences for the whole system?

This post feels oddly satisfying in its total lack of conclusion. Truly, I can live the quesiton(s), as Rilke admonishes so eloquently. I look forward to what insights emerge in time, especially as I continue to release streams of consciousness in writing each morning. This week I will practice letting go of attachment to outcomes, and attend to habits that make my desired outcomes of high creativity and connection more likely: bedtime, morning light and writing, regular exercise, sitting with uncertainty.

Let’s see what happens!