Prompt 263. What I Learned from the Astronauts

The author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers on the overview effect

Back in Tunisia, age eight

Hi friend,

This summer, my brother Adam moved to Tunisia to teach at an international school—the same one we attended when we were young. A few weeks ago, my parents joined him there, and it makes me happy for so many reasons. I’m thrilled that my parents are no longer consumed by caregiving for me, that they can return to the life and the projects they were pursuing before my relapse. And I’m so proud of Adam for going back to his roots, quite literally—he’s working with kids who grew up like us, between cultures and continents. I wish I’d had a teacher like my brother, both because of his awareness of that kind of liminal living and also because he’s the kindest, funniest, all-around best human there is.

Yet along with the pride and the joy, I carry a sense of sadness and longing. Because I haven’t received all of my post-transplant immunizations, I currently can’t travel to Tunisia. Even more than not being there, it’s that I can’t be there that makes my family feel so far away. We talk on the phone regularly, but it’s no substitute for sitting around the table together and sharing a meal. My heart is on a different continent.

If I think about it, that’s always been true. I was born in the U.S., but as the child of immigrants and with all of my extended family living abroad, the concept of home always felt so fractured. As much as I wished for total assimilation, that just wasn’t possible. My family spoke French at home, so when I spoke English—which I only learned to do in kindergarten—it was with an accent. On top of that, my parents didn’t follow traditional American customs, and they cooked “weird foods,” as some of my classmates put it. Such othering only intensified after 9/11. I cried with the rest of the country at that terrible footage of the planes hitting the Twin Towers, but the very next day, in the hallway of the Saratoga Springs High School, a kid asked me if it was true that my dad was a “sand n*gger.”

Yet it’s not like I could pass as a native of Switzerland, where my mother is from—I’m too “exotic.” In Tunisia, my father’s homeland, I’m too white. For many years, that made me feel alienated from others—and sometimes even from myself. I became a chameleon, shifting to fit what I thought was expected in order to blend in.

But as I got older, I began to see the benefits of being an outsider. It made me open, curious, and eager to bridge the distances between people—qualities that have served me in both my work and my life. I became a student of human behavior, observing people, studying their idioms and customs, the way an anthropologist might. And as I began to embrace who I am and the particular struggles and gifts that come with it, I felt liberated, free to create my own path, to inhabit a new world. Rather than alienated, I began to think of myself as an alien, and I could build a community and make my own home among other aliens, artists, and seekers, including my husband Jon, who didn’t have the rootless childhood I did—he can trace a long lineage in New Orleans—but was always a misfit in his own right.

Likely we’ve all experienced the sensation of being on the outside, to varying degrees, for varying reasons. But one of the gifts of a creative practice is the power of taking such moments and transforming them into something meaningful, even beautiful. I consider today’s contributor, the bestselling author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers, a brilliant practitioner of this kind of alchemy. His searching gaze and illuminating insights have helped readers of all ages see things from a new perspective.

In a few days, Oliver is publishing his first illustrated book for readers of all ages, Begin Again (available for preorder), which is a very brief history of humanity and his dream for where we go from here. Today he’s sharing with us a gorgeous essay that tells the origin story of Begin Again, his own origin story, and the powerful insight that came from looking at the world from far outside its confines. To discover what he learned from the astronauts, read on.

Sending love,

Suleika

The Isolation Journals Chat—

It’s been a year since we introduced the Isolation Journals Chat, our very own social space where we connect and share ideas and have meaningful conversations. We’ve mainly been using it for our beloved Friday ritual of sharing our small joys—some of mine are pictured above. As one community member wrote, it’s like “sitting in a giant web—all these interconnected threads that vibrate with everything kind about life. We all move the web and we all feel moved. It’s wonderful.”

But I have some exciting, new things planned for this space. I recently started a new book project, and in the Chat, I’m going to share what I’m learning (or re-learning) about getting a big creative project off the ground. I’m also hoping to hear from you—about your struggles, your victories, and your tried-and-true tips for getting through. The easiest way to join us is in the Substack app, which just got a really lovely redesign. I hope to see you there!

Illustration by Oliver Jeffers, from Begin Again

Prompt 263. What I Learned from the Astronauts by Oliver Jeffers

There is a phenomenon known as the overview effect, where any human who has been far enough from the surface of our Earth tends to have the same shift in perception. In the first days onboard the International Space Station, astronauts take to pointing out their hometowns and cities, which shifts outward to their countries, then the rough continents that represent “home.” Finally a dawning realization plants itself firmly in their minds: this one object, floating in the cathedral of space, is home.

I grew up in the politically divided and violent city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. I know all too well the destructive patterns of an “us” and “them” mentality—how two opposing communities become insular and defensive, how their own identities become dependent on the existence of an enemy. “I don’t know who I am, but I know who I’m not” all too often spills into violence. 

Raised as a Northern Irish Catholic, I am somewhere in the middle of that turbulence of fortune. I’ve experienced much of the grace and advantage that comes from being born into the body I inhabit. But I also come from a British colony—indeed the original British colony. For the best part of the twentieth century, Northern Irish Catholics were treated as second-class citizens in their own homeland.

But by the mid-1980s, the origin of all this conflict was lost on me. It had always seemed obvious that it was never a religious war, and by the mid-90s, it wasn’t clear that it had come from a class struggle either. Partly because I’d been told some of the stories, partly because I hadn’t been told others, and partly because I’d compared these stories with others far and wide, it seemed more like political terrorism on two fronts than anything else. Sophisticated gangsterism with good PR.

Years later, when I moved to New York City, I was shocked and hurt that no one on the other side of the Atlantic seemed to know or care about the divided and violent history of where I came from. But when I learned that British and even Southern Irish ex-patriots in New York were also broadly ignorant about our current status, I reached a new level of frustration. We were killing each other to be part of either a larger Irish or British identity, but outside the few hundred square miles of our province, no one seemed to care. What to take from that disheartening message?

Not much—until I started reading about astronauts.

I was researching for my book Here We Are, and I immediately recognized the way they described looking at the Earth from space was the same as how I’d been talking about Northern Ireland from across the distance of the Atlantic Ocean.

The summer after my son was born, there was growing violence building back in Belfast. As I watched news footage coming from across the ocean and saw that, like when I was growing up, it was kids who were hijacking and burning buses, throwing petrol bombs, rioting with each other and with the police, I wondered what these teenagers truly knew of the 800-year-old conflict. The reality is they probably didn’t know much. They’d simply inherited a story from their parents that was validated by their peers. They’d been told who to hate. This, I told myself, was not the story I was going to tell my son of where he came from. And as an artist, it was perhaps my biggest epiphany—that the most powerful thing we can do as civilized human beings is change the story. We can always, always, change the story.

Your prompt for the week:

Think of an inherited story that needs changing—in your own life, in your family, in your hometown, in your country. How was it told to you? How will you tell it differently? 

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s Contributor—

Oliver Jeffers is a visual artist and author working in painting, bookmaking, illustration, collage, performance, and sculpture. While investigating the ways the human mind understands its world, his work also functions as comic relief in the face of futility. His critically acclaimed picture books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller and Time Best Book of the Year Here We Are, have been translated into over fifty languages and sold over 14 million copies worldwide. Photo by Yasmina Cowan.

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