One Small Step For An Astronaut
Henry here with some relationship weirdness. By now we all know of Lisa Marie Nowak, the astronaut who came apart at the seams. A married woman with three children, she drove 1400 kilometers across Texas to Florida wearing a diaper so as to not have to stop for bathroom breaks. Her goal was to confront a woman she thought was a rival for the affection of another astronaut.
Apparently she had no definite proof that such a betrayal was
happening but she seems to have gotten the idea in her head that her
rival was stealing her intended’s affection away.
In previous posts, I talked about projection, throwing out your thoughts
onto the world and seeing what you expect to see. This would appear to be a
prime case of projection. She imagined something was happening, something which was largely the invention of her own mind and it got her into a lot of trouble.
We can see to what extraordinary lengths she went to confront her rival.
Clearly she was persuaded that her imagination was not based on
projection, but on facts, that this was actually happening. This is the thing about projection: It is absolutely believable to the person experiencing it.
It is believable because there is something in us that is trying to come to the surface, and all new insights first come out into the open through projection. It is a very powerful process and if we don’t understand it, it can carry us away to very strange places. It is also essential for us to look carefully at our convictions about who is right and wrong in our lives and wonder about how much we are inventing or projecting on others. Unfortunately, Lisa Marie Nowak is just an extreme example of something we all do to a lesser degree.