"It's like trying to describe what you feel when you're standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it's like"
About this Quote
Schmitt reaches for the oldest trick in the book - the comparison - and then immediately admits it won’t work. Grand Canyon vertigo, first love, childbirth: he stacks three experiences that culture already treats as untranslatable, then uses them as a runway to his real point. Some realities aren’t just hard to put into words; they’re categorically resistant to being secondhanded. Coming from an astronaut, that’s not mystical posturing. It’s a quiet rebuke to the way modern life turns everything into content, a digestible clip, a museum label.
The intent is partly protective. Astronauts get asked to commodify awe for audiences who want the emotional souvenir without the risk, training, or isolation. Schmitt’s line draws a boundary: language can gesture, but it can’t deliver the thing itself. That boundary also flatters the listener, because it invites them to search their own memory for a private, bodily truth - the moment when the world got too large for your vocabulary.
The subtext is about epistemic humility. In an era when “I saw it on a screen” competes with lived experience, Schmitt insists on presence as a kind of knowledge. Context matters: he’s a scientist and explorer, not a poet by trade, which gives the sentiment extra bite. When someone who has literally left Earth tells you the view can’t be explained, it lands less as cliché and more as a warning about the limits of narration, even at humanity’s highest altitude.
The intent is partly protective. Astronauts get asked to commodify awe for audiences who want the emotional souvenir without the risk, training, or isolation. Schmitt’s line draws a boundary: language can gesture, but it can’t deliver the thing itself. That boundary also flatters the listener, because it invites them to search their own memory for a private, bodily truth - the moment when the world got too large for your vocabulary.
The subtext is about epistemic humility. In an era when “I saw it on a screen” competes with lived experience, Schmitt insists on presence as a kind of knowledge. Context matters: he’s a scientist and explorer, not a poet by trade, which gives the sentiment extra bite. When someone who has literally left Earth tells you the view can’t be explained, it lands less as cliché and more as a warning about the limits of narration, even at humanity’s highest altitude.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
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