Mission to Mars

Reflecting on the pursuit of happiness and the mission behind our missions.

Imagine you’re about to embark on a bold adventure. You’ve been chosen from among thousands of candidates. Indeed, you are highly skilled and have been training for this for years. The adventure?

Go to Mars and start a colony.

Your days and evenings have been filled with preparation. You have had to learn all the ins and outs of space travel. Low gravity. Oxygen systems. Navigation. You have also had to learn what it takes to survive on a hostile planet. Radiation. Bitter cold. Sandy windstorms. But you’re excited by the prospect of surviving on the surface of another world, and you have highly specialized skills to this effect. So, despite the risks, you want to do this.

You want it bad.

About a month from launch, you get a visit from one of the officers at mission control. She says there’s one more thing she must figure out before letting you take off with the team.

“What do you want out of life?” she asks.

“Um,” you hesitate, “to go to Mars.”

“Is there nothing more fundamental than that?” she asks.

“Right now? I don’t think so,” you say.

“Well, why do you want to go to Mars?” she asks.

You get nervous. The wrong answer to this question could get you kicked off the mission. So you raise your index finger as if to say, Let me think. You scratch your head and reflect for a moment.

You consider fame, but that’s not it. It’s not money, either, because wealth is way more fun back on earth. There’s only one answer, and you’ll have to be honest.

“It’ll make me happy,” you blurt out finally.

“Happy?” she says.

“Fulfilled. I don’t see this as some sacrifice for the human race. I love my training. I love doing my job. I love the idea of pushing humanity forward. The thought of working every day to build something of this importance. Well, that will make me happy.”

“Alright, colonist,” she says, smiling. “I’ll see you in a month.”

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You might have a couple of questions about that story. You might even have some questions about the whole exercise. And that’s understandable. Let me see if I can anticipate a couple of them.

First, why did the mission officer need to know that you were interested in being happy?

For one thing, you have to be motivated by something powerful enough to undertake something so dangerous. It’s going to require a lot of you. A feeling of sanctimony or self-sacrifice could soon evaporate. But as importantly, unhappy people can make everybody else pretty miserable. Your crewmates don’t need that.

Second, why this story in particular?

The truth is, I could have asked you to imagine starting a circus, scoring a symphony, or making a quilt. The framing could be pretty much anything. After all, why do any of us do anything? There are exceptions, but the answer almost always traces back to the same motivation: the desire to be happy or fulfilled. Even unpleasant things like going to work or paying your bills have something to do with that because people who don’t pay their bills quickly become unhappy.

I want to be happy. You want to be happy. (If not, you might want to consult a therapist.) Assuming we share this fundamental mission, we have a nice patch of common ground from which to launch our various endeavors.

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