GLENAIR • Volume 25 • Number 1 Publisher
Distance Gives Perspective It’s been well over 50 years since the Apollo 8 spacecraft put astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders in orbit around the moon. In all the excitement that led up to that flight, I most recall the buzz about seeing the dark side of the lunar landscape for the first time in human history. What a revelation it was that the biggest take-away from Apollo 8 instead turned out to be the iconic “Earthrise” photograph that so dramatically captured our own planet rising above the lunar landscape. Bill Anders had a line that perfectly captured the moment, “We came to explore the moon and what we discovered was the Earth.” The impact of the photograph was quite visceral, changing forever our view of Earth from the perspective of the many lands we each occupy, to a more holistic view of the planet as a single system. Not surprisingly, the environmental movement adopted the image as a tool to remind us that we are all in this together. These Outlook columns are all of a type. Each one takes a look at some singular aspect of the world around us, and then applies the lesson back to our business here at Glenair. Read individually, the articles are like the many countries, organizations, businesses, and neighborhoods we each occupy on earth. But read as a series, they become a holistic view of the system of values and practices we follow here at Glenair. The perspective I hope to share with you all today is that only by viewing and treating the important realms of our lives as integrated systems—rather than as random assortments of tasks and duties—can we ever hope to achieve balance, happiness and success. No matter what our individual roles are, we all need to be reminded now and then to step back, to get a little distance, to consider our activities in the context of the larger system. Like the Apollo 8 astronauts, who paused in their laser-focused examination of the moon’s surface to look up and witness, for the first time in human history, our blue-green planet rising above the horizon. There’s an old saying that“distance gives perspective.” It seems to me that this is a powerfully important thing to practice in life—whether you are orbiting the moon, or doing your job down here on Earth.
Christopher J. Toomey Managing Editor Marcus Kaufman Editor/Art Director Mike Borgsdorf Graphic Designer George Ramirez Technical Consultant Jim Donaldson Issue Contributors Martin Eichelberger Shawn Grady
Guido Hunziker Brian Kaufman Nate Kaufman Ron Logan Torsten Möllers Ali Yassine
Distribution Terry White
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QwikConnect is published quarterly by Glenair, Inc. and printed in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2021 Glenair, Inc. A complete archive of past issues of QwikConnect is available on the Internet at www.glenair.com/ qwikconnect
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