The Special J Challenge

I agreed to be assigned a topic by James Ensor, and he asked me:

“There’s an ongoing recruitment drive for a one-way mission to Mars.  If you were chosen, what practical skills would you have to offer?  What impractical skills would you have to offer?  What could you learn once you were there?  What would you struggle to learn, even in a life-or-death situation?  Would any part of you actually want to attempt a mission like that?”

I’ll try to answer this question as honestly as I can.  It’s hard for me to put myself in the mindset of the situation suggested, as there is no part of me whatsoever that would want to attempt that kind of mission.  I am and have always been terrified of being on any kind of ship afloat or awaft away from land.  I’ve never trusted boats on the ocean, because I always imagine them sinking.  The thought of actually being on one that’s not anchored and docked at port makes my mind immediately feel trapped and panicked, like claustrophobia on a larger scale, and fills me with a sense of doom, because as breathtaking and violently romantic as I find oceans to be, I feel somehow like they want to swallow me up, like they want to swallow everything up.  I watch a lot of documentaries showing underwater footage of wrecked and sunken ships.  Oceans seem to treasure these captured illustrious giants; they adorn them in their own natural riches and the ships gain a breathless, haunting, romantic quality, much like the undersea itself.  When a ship sinks, the ocean has triumphed over man, and its trophy sits forever on a most glorious shelf, or until it is devoured, a slow and sumptuous meal savored over centuries sometimes, or one could say its dissolution is the ocean absorbing it into its cold and life-giving vastness.

Now that I have self-indulgently followed my thought, I will attempt to get back to answering the question.  One of my weaknesses, something I would struggle to learn, would be the safety of aircrafts.  In addition to being afraid of boats, after a terrible experience a couple of years ago in which a plane I was in really did seem to me and most of its passengers, for an hour and a half during a storm it really shouldn’t have flown through, like it was going to crash, I am afraid of flying in airplanes.  I will more than likely resume flying at some point, but as of now, I still can’t get the memory of all of those drinks flying up to the ceiling and so many people screaming, myself included, out of my head.  So if getting on a plane is terrifying for me, I can’t and wouldn’t even want to imagine how scary getting into a rocketship or spacecraft of any kind would be, never mind the launch…I would keep envisioning what happened to the Challenger, as my mom had a poster about it in her physics classroom for so many years when I was a child, and I would always stare into the passengers’ eyes and smiling faces and imagine them screaming and crying and holding onto each other for blind comfort in their final moments hurtling to their deaths.  Yeah, so, space travel…would be a difficult thing for me to get through.   

So, assuming I didn’t die of a heart attack during the journey and that the ship didn’t crash, once we landed on Mars, I think I would be able to offer my problem solving, planning, and strategical skills, as those have all gotten me through a lot.  I’m someone who’s had to adapt the world around her to her own needs, so I could be an asset in adapting a non-native planet to meet a small society’s needs.  Then again, this skill is born from not being able to adapt so easily to my given surroundings, so that could be something I’d struggle with.  Other practical things would be my athleticism, my flexibility and balance– I would be able to walk and balance atop things most people would be too scared to try, which could possibly prove useful.  I am a passionate baker who’s used to making things from scratch.  Though, with significantly less gravity, I’m not sure if the ovens we’re used to using on this planet would work the same.  But I could use my problem solving skills to figure it out, or my charm to cajole a technologically inclined colonist to assist me with the potential problem.  Another practical skill– and I don’t usually see it as practical, but in this situation, I think it would be– is that I’m good at comforting people.  I have a soothing presence and I’m good at calming people down and making them feel better when they’re insecure or in emotional pain.  People would probably have a lot of problems adjusting to being colonists on an alien planet, and I could help soothe their moods and worries, even if I couldn’t soothe my own.  That’s usually how it goes.  And this presents another challenge for myself:  I don’t think I’d be able to ease my own persistent insecurities about being on a new planet and attempting to colonize it, never being able to go back home to earth, etc.  Then again, I’m usually unable to quell my insecurities about living on my home planet, so perhaps these worries would only be a slight shift from what I’m used to.  I also think I’d be good at helping to found a government that establishes law and order while guaranteeing individuals the freedom to be themselves.  I had to write constitutions for so many different organizations back in the day, and they usually ended up sounding very strong, worded very specifically, but in a way that was easy to understand.

As far as impractical skills, I’d be great at recording history and making up stories for people’s entertainment, and I would not confuse or interchange the two.  I could bring books with me and read aloud to people to get their minds off of their troubles.  Many friends I’ve had have enjoyed me reading to them.  I also sing a lot in my spare time, and though I’m quite shy, once in a while, I can sing decently in front of someone.  I have a good memory for learning songs, too.  So, once I became comfortable, I could possibly entertain people with song.  I’m also very good at singing with other people.  I’m

good at practical painting and commercial art.  My old boss used to ask me to make every single sign for her store, and customers would always rave about them.  So I could help decorate the new colony and entice commerce a bit.

I do not know at all what I would learn once I was on Mars, except more personally, the details of the planet and how to survive on it.  Hopefully.  Probably things that would surprise me, and ways that a society there would seem a lot like society on earth.

If I was selected for such a journey, however, I would end up disappointing those excited for me, by turning it down flat.  Unless the earth was going to very soon be rendered unable to sustain life, or about to explode or something.  Though I wonder if the earth exploding would throw Mars out of orbit, dooming us colonists.  I can say with the entirety of my being that there isn’t any part of me that would want to undertake such a journey or mission, unless the alternative was certain death.  Assuming that it was just a mission for exploration and scientific/sociological data, and nothing urgent, I would offer one of you diarists my golden ticket.  Whoever would seem to want it most.  If need be, I would dress you up as me, and give you my driver’s license and social security card.  I could procure new copies of both for myself before you left the planet, or just assume a whole new identity.  Though all in all, I like my identity.