Thoroughly rested and ready to go again, I took off for the Grand Canyon, just north of Flagstaff, Arizona. The year was 1969.

Under the full moon in the clear evening sky, I got a little daring. I strapped on a pair of hand-made, blackish, angel-like wings, and I ventured over to the edge of a cliff, high above the Grand Canyon.

More than a mile below, I saw the reflection of the moonlight in the Colorado River as it twisted through the monumental canyon. The roaring river sent an echo through the monumental canyon. It was an awesome, scenic sight to behold. “I’ve always wanted to fly like a bird,” I said. “I wonder if these manmade angel wings will keep me aloft?”

I backed up about thirty feet, tightened my wing-straps, and pulled the visor down over my helmet. I took a deep breath and loped toward the edge of the cliff.

Immediately after take-off, I experienced a minor problem. One of the mechanical wings collapsed. I fluttered through the air for a few moments. Then my other wing malfunctioned. I fell straight down, in a tight spiral, toward the dark canyon floor.

About five seconds and 500 yards into my free-fall, I philosophically said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have set my goals so high!”

I was a risk-taking knight, but I wasn’t stupid. I remembered my life-threatening, ski-jumping ordeal at the Nagano Winter Olympic Games. This time I had a back-up plan, just in case. I simply pulled the rip-cord on my parachute. It opened properly, and I floated harmlessly to the ground. I landed in a small clearing, right next to the raging river.

Down on my hands and knees, I gathered up the life-saving parachute. As I neatly folded the umbrella-shaped apparatus, I asked, “Lord, how can I set more practical personal goals?”

As if She had just gone for a leisurely swim at the beach, the Lord walked ashore, right out of the swift current of the Colorado River. God wore very little—just an itsy-bitsy, purple-and-white, polka-dot bikini. Immediately, I rose to the occasion. Things were definitely looking up for me. The Lord said, “Wantsalittle, if at first you do succeed, try something harder. And try to keep your nasty little mind off of Me and on what I’m about to say, okay?”

“Yes, Lord. I’m paying close attention!”

“Thanks! . . . You asked Me about ‘setting goals.’ I think that I can give you some good tips on this subject. Wantsalittle, try to get into the habit of setting lofty and challenging, but also realistic, personal goals. Your goals should be written down as personal affirmation statements. Here’s an example: As I am building more self-confidence with each passing day, I am making major strides in taking control of my life.”

“God, it’s hard for me to stay focused on some of my personal goals.”

“Well, Wantsalittle, I’m happily surprised by your serious-minded nature, today. Maybe there is some hope for you, after all!”

“Don’t get me wrong, Lord. You’re strikingly beautiful, as usual. But You kind of scared me, the other day, with Your ‘Medusa’ threat. Were You really serious about that?”

“No, I wasn’t. I just wanted to get your attention at the time. Wantsalittle, thanks for that nice comment about My looking ‘strikingly beautiful.’ Even your Lord likes to receive a nice compliment, once in a while. I almost thought that you hadn’t noticed Me in My skimpy bathing suit.”

“God, You must be kidding! Believe me, I did notice and I am still noticing!”

“Thank you, again, Wantsalittle. I thought that you’d like the outfit, at least what little there is of it! . . . Let’s continue to talk about how you can achieve your personal goals. Visualize your goals. Act upon them on a daily basis. Try to anticipate the emotion—exhilaration, for instance—that you would experience by achieving a worthy, longer-range goal. Constantly image your goal until the subconscious mind receives the picture that your conscious mind is continually projecting. If you do, your subconscious thoughts will steer your conscious thoughts toward actions that will allow you to accomplish your goal or dream.”

“Terrific! I’ll try to vividly image what it is that I want most.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid you would say.”

“Come now, Lord. What kind of a guy do You think I am?”

“Wantsalittle, do you really want Me to answer that question? Never mind. . . . There is one other thing that you should do with respect to setting challenging, realistic, personal goals: Write down at least three ‘objectives’ for each of your goals. Objectives are personal action steps, which will help you to achieve your goals. Objectives have three elements: condition—‘At,’ stating when or at what time you will initiate some action toward your goal; behavior—‘I will,’ stating what you will do to achieve your goal; and criterion—‘So that,’ stating the desired result of your goal.”

“Lord, I thoroughly understand what You have just said about goal writing. Is there anything else that You’d like to add on this topic?”

“Yes, Wantsalittle, there is one final thing that I’d like to mention: Author Ursula Le Guin stated, ‘It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.’ As you think with distinct, practical goals in mind, you will more likely achieve those objectives or realize your dreams. Wantsalittle, think about what lofty, realistic, personal goal you can set for yourself.”

“Okay, God! I’ve got a pretty lofty goal in mind right now!”

“Good! Go for it! . . . I’ve got to go for now. See you later!” The Lord disappeared before I had a chance to tell Her “good-bye.”

I headed for Cape Kennedy in Florida. I was cordially invited to take part in the Apollo 11 Moon Mission.

Thousands of curious spectators looked on as the moon-bound rocket lifted off the launch pad on July 16, 1969 and thrust its way through the earth’s dense atmosphere and into outer space. Roughly 240,000 miles later, the rocket landed safely on the rocky, barren surface of the moon, right near the middle of the Sea of Tranquility.

Four astronauts were on board, including me. Three of us—Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and I—boarded the “Eagle” lunar-landing module on July 20th.

Neil, the Mission Commander, and Buzz, the Lunar Module Pilot, couldn’t help themselves from laughing at me. They thought that I looked pretty stupid with my space helmet pulled over the steel helmet on my otherwise unprotected full suit of armor. I laughed back at them. I wondered why the astronauts wore those ridiculous-looking space outfits over their normal NASA uniforms.

The fourth astronaut on the lunar mission, Michael Collins, the Command Module Pilot, watched and photographed us from the observation seat in the main spaceship. After a brief argument and a struggle between Neil Armstrong and me over “who” would lead the way, Neil stepped out of the modular ahead of me. That gave him the distinction of being the first man, other than Superman, to walk on the moon.

As he began his historic, memorable trek, Neil said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil also had the honor of planting the pole that carried the American flag.

It seemed to me that Neil wanted to be the “first” guy to do everything! I wanted to be the first at something. So I zipped down my fly, and I proudly wrote my name in the moon sand!

Buzz was the first to gaze down and see white and blue swirls around our planet Earth, a beautiful, breath-taking site to behold. All three of us “earthlings” had broad smiles on our faces.

Just prior to our climbing back into the lunar modular, I shouted, prophetically, “Maybe no man can fly without artificial help, but let every man know that he can still shoot for the moon!”

(The moral of this episode: Set lofty, but realistic personal goals!)

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