To Be Taught, If Fortunate

by Becky Chambers

You don’t have to rush. This file will have taken fourteen years to reach Earth, and assuming that we have the good luck of someone reading it right away and replying straight after, it’d take that file another fourteen years. So, while we can’t wait around forever, the urgency – like so many things in space travel – is relative.

If I ask what I’m asking only of people who agree with me at the outset, with whom I already share a dream and a language, then there’s no point in asking at all.

It’s difficult to assign value to discovery when you haven’t sorted out the parameters of reality yet.

I’m an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them.

Don’t believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence.

The amount a person can spare is relative; the value of generosity is not.

We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank.

Are astronauts still relevant in your time? We have found nothing you can sell. We have found nothing you can put to practical use. We have found no worlds that could be easily or ethically settled, were that end desired. We have satisfied nothing but curiosity, gained nothing but knowledge. To me, these are the noblest goals.