An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield

Author:Chris Hadfield [Hadfield, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-345-81272-8
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2013-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

Of course, that kind of single-mindedness takes a village—other people have to pick up the slack when you’re unavailable, literally or figuratively. If you fail to recognize that fact and behave accordingly, you can count on creating exactly the kinds of distractions and conflicts you should be trying to avoid when you’re facing a major challenge. People around you will let you know in no uncertain terms that your single-minded dedication bears a striking resemblance to pigheaded selfishness.

During our first few years in Houston, I’d volunteer for anything and everything at NASA and the CSA, so I was on the road a lot. After a while I started to notice that when I got home, there was no longer a hero’s welcome. The kids didn’t leap up and rush joyfully to the door to greet me. Sometimes they even seemed a tad annoyed to see me, particularly if I reminded them of my expectations in the way of manners, rules and comportment. Helene was delighted to explain this puzzling phenomenon. She informed me in the most diplomatic fashion possible that I’d been away so much that my family had learned to live without me, and she and the kids had developed their own ways of doing things and didn’t really appreciate my attempts to turn back the clock. In other words, I was now effectively a visitor in my own home and would have to put in some serious time before picking up the threads of fatherhood. She went on to say that she’d wondered if maybe I wasn’t going just a wee bit overboard with the extra work assignments. Were they really getting me closer to my professional goals? Or had I simply got in the habit of saying yes at work and no to my family?

We’d had a similar discussion back in Bagotville, when we had three kids under the age of 5 and I was spending quite a few of my days off taking part in optional military exercises. Helene had asked, point blank, “Do you want to have a family or just a career? I’ll happily give you the space to have both, and I’m willing to carry 90 percent of the burden here at home until I get a paying job again, but I can’t carry 99 percent.” She was all for me volunteering—but she encouraged me in the strongest possible terms to start evaluating on a case-by-case basis whether a given volunteer opportunity was something I needed to do for professional growth, or just something I wanted to do. I did try to prioritize differently after that and to be more conscious of the effects my decisions had on her and on my own relationship with our kids.

I had to recalibrate again in Houston. The reality of an astronaut’s life is that you travel 70 percent of the time and you don’t have much say over your own schedule—so when you do have leeway, you have to make choices that clearly communicate gratitude to your family and a desire to see them, on their terms, every once in a while.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.