David McElroy

Lori was laughing as she told me something her puppy had done. We were both on our way home after work Thursday afternoon. When I first called her, she was grumpy about the lousy week she’s had, but that changed after a few minutes. She was laughing and happy.

She suddenly sounded mildly annoyed and said she needed to take a phone call from her mother. Her mom had called five times since we had started talking, and that wasn’t like her.

About 20 minutes later, she texted me. She was in a daze. Her mother had been calling to say that her father has brain tumors.

When I called her back, she wasn’t the same happy young woman she had been. Her entire life had just been turned upside down. She still doesn’t know the details, but she’s leaving town first thing Friday morning to drive home — to deal with an uncertain future for the father she loves dearly.

And I’m sitting here thinking — again — just how uncertain our short lives really are.

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I was just a little boy when Apollo 11 launched on its way to the moon, but I followed every detail.

The space program had my complete attention. I had just discovered Star Trek and I was completely certain that I would one day follow my heroes — real and fictitious — to the stars.

I watched the launch of Apollo 11 with the rest of the world. We all followed the flight nervously for four days. Late at night on July 20, 1969, I was glued to our television to watch Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon.

I was ecstatic. Next we would fly to Mars. Then to other planets. By the time I grew up, we would move on to conquer outer space. Big things were about to happen. And I would be a part of it.

I recently watched the documentary “Apollo 11,” which used never-before-seen film of the mission. The film was breathtaking to me. It made me really emotional. As I watched these engineers and technicians make this amazing achievement happen, I found myself thinking, “These are my people. These nerds are my tribe. At heart, I’m one of them.”

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People all around me seem angry and agitated lately in ways that they don’t even seem to fully understand. I’ve realized lately that I’ve felt something very much like what existential philosophers called existential angst or dread.

It seems as though we have more choices than ever, but we have less confidence than ever before in our ability to make the right choices. I suggest that we’re feeling these ways because we’re focused on the wrong things in life.

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