Night had not yet overtaken the pastel sky, but the moon was already visible. It was not quite a full moon, but it was not a perfect crescent either. It was caught in an inelegant phase somewhere in between. As the hours passed and the heavens dimmed, the moon grew more brilliant, and it greeted the eventide with a radiance that upstaged every other celestial body with natural ease.

An aging man gazed at the twilit sky from his porch. His craggy face was wise and rugged, with hollows like craters and dark eyes that gleamed like distant stars. The moon had always captivated him. It had been forty-seven years since he had stepped foot on its gray surface.

He struggled to recall the details of his mission—the number of rock samples he had taken; which of his crewmates had performed the transposition, docking, and extraction maneuver; the name of the aircraft carrier that had recovered him upon his return to earth—but he remembered the feeling. How could he forget that overwhelming trepidation and unstoppable hope? There were thousands of ways the mission could have failed. The spacecraft could have caught fire at any moment. A single computer error could have derailed the entire expedition. He could have lost connection with his support crew and capsule communicator back on his home planet. But none of the doomsday scenarios could have quelled his confidence in the potential of humanity and his primal curiosity about the workings of the universe. Back then, there was no person or circumstance in the galaxy that could stifle his spirit.

But eventually, the time came for him to come back down to earth. Earth is the most pragmatic planet, with its matter-of-fact food chains and businesslike seasonal transitions. It was no place for the man’s burgeoning young mind full of wild stellar aspirations and ideals. Yet it is also the only habitable planet, so the man had no alternative but to remain grounded on its dependable, safe, overfamiliar crust. The earth-dwellers welcomed him back with cheers and pride. He settled down in a decent neighborhood in a satisfactory state in an acceptable country on a tolerable earth. He fell in love with a moderately worldly woman and married. He bought a midnight blue house with a veranda with a reasonably attractive view of the stars. He sunk into a life of terrestrial mundanity and routine. It gradually ate away at his optimism until his soul was a dying star that gave birth to a black hole that had such powerful gravity it prevented any light from escaping.

The only thing that consoled him was his nightly ritual, the only ritual he enjoyed. At sunset every evening, he would wait for the moon to emerge. He closed his eyes and recollected the sensation of his feet touching the dusty crevices of the lunar landscape. He cherished the memory of looking at earth from hundreds of thousands of miles away and waving stupidly as if all of humanity could see him and collectively wave back. He remembered the soft, silvery haze that had shrouded his landing site and filled his heart with mystery. And in that fleeting moment, the gleaming orb in the sky didn’t seem so far away.

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