“I could have gone on flying through space forever.”
— Yuri Gagarin
Gagarin's remark after landing near Saratov on April 12, 1961, reported in Soviet press conferences following his Vostok 1 flight.
When my parachute opened over that field near Saratov on April 12, 1961, part of me didn't want to come down. For 108 minutes I had seen Earth without borders, without wars, just blue and white and silence. I was a kid from a village the Nazis burned, and I was floating above it all. Whatever you are working toward right now, there is a version of your life where you get there. And when you do, you will want to stay forever. That feeling is worth every hard day before it.