If you could drive straight up, you would find yourself in the near-vacuum of interplanetary space. Beneath you—blue, white, breathtakingly vast, and brimming over with life—would stretch the lovely planet on which our species and so many others have grown up. We inhabit a shallow zone of environmental clemency. Compared to the size of the Earth, it is thinner than the coat of shellac on a large classroom globe.

I want to learn about fear; that means I must be curious. There mustn’t be the feeling “I must get rid of it.” If I have these feelings I cannot learn. […] My fears are so strong that I want to run away from them. And the very movement away from them breeds more fear—are you following this? Do I see the truth and the fact that moving away from fear increases fear?