The main thing we decided during that drive is that we would not be defined by this experience. I wouldn’t go through the rest of my life being the commander-who-wasn’t, that poor guy who didn’t get to go to space a third time. We’d seen what had happened to other astronauts who were scrubbed from missions, and we thought that the next thing that would kill us, metaphorically speaking, wasn’t an ultrasound but a loss of our own sense of purpose. Fortunately, we also knew the boldface that could save us: focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination. Keep looking to the future,
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