I Got to NASA. The Search Didn't End.

An astronaut told me he wished he had done more. That was the first crack in a story I had been writing my whole life.

By Peter Plötner. Aerospace engineer and Wayfinder Life Coach. More about Peter →

I had a strange realization at NASA.

I was twenty-something, writing my diploma thesis at the Johnson Space Center, simulating the International Space Station. I had a badge. I worked on real spacecraft. I slept on a bed tucked under a staircase in shared housing, no door, more or less Harry Potter style. I did not care. I was at NASA.

One day, an astronaut gave me a private tour of the 1:1 mockup of the ISS at JSC. He walked me through it module by module. At one point he stopped, pointed to a specific spot, and told me, quietly, that this was where he had done his spacewalk. He had performed an EVA. Even among astronauts, not everyone gets to do a spacewalk.

And then he kept talking. He wished he had also flown a long-duration mission, the deeper version of what he had done. And almost in the same breath, he wished he had built a steady career inside the organization, the kind that being an astronaut had cost him. The two wishes pull in opposite directions. More time as an active astronaut means less time building that career. You cannot have the upside of both, and the upside of both is exactly what the mind reaches for. The next thing, and the next, and the good half of every road not taken. He knew the two could not coexist. His mind wished for both anyway.

Something in me went very quiet.

I was standing next to a man who had walked in space, listening to him describe how he wished he had done more. It was not a complaint. It was just honest. He was a kind person sharing something true with a young engineer who clearly idolized the work.

And what I heard, underneath what he was saying, was this. There is no arrival in this. There is no moment where the searching stops, no version of “making it.” Once you get to NASA, everyone around you is at NASA. Once you become an astronaut, everyone around you is an astronaut. Once you do an EVA, you wish you had done a long-duration flight. There is no point on this line where the search ends. The search just upgrades.

That tour was one of the first cracks. I did not have the words for what I had seen. I went back to my bed under the stairs and tried to figure out what had just happened. The words took another decade to arrive.

The words, when they came

Years later, I saw a clip of Jim Carrey at the Golden Globes. He was on stage, introducing himself in character, and he said something I have not forgotten.

“I'm two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. When I go to sleep at night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep. I'm two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shut-eye. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream. No sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search. For what I know ultimately won't fulfill me.”

What gets me is the last sentence. He knows. He says it out loud, on a stage, into a microphone. The third trophy will not fulfill him. And his mind wants it anyway. That is the part worth sitting with. He can know the search is empty and his mind can keep reaching, at the same time. The knowing does not switch the wanting off.

The line I sat with longest, though, was a different one. Then I would be enough.

Not “it would be enough.” I would be enough.

That was the sentence I had been writing, in invisible ink, underneath my life. If I got the diploma at TUM. If I got to NASA. If I got the doctorate at the University of Tokyo. If I got selected as an astronaut.

Then I would be enough.

A few things I want to be honest about

I want to be careful here. This is the spot where a personal essay usually tidies itself into a clean lesson. The real story has more loose ends than that.

I do not regret the diploma. I do not regret NASA. I do not regret the PhD. I do not regret applying to be an astronaut. Each one was genuinely amazing, and I cherish all of it. The PhD at Todai changed how I think. The astronaut selection, even ending in rejection, was one of the most meaningful things I have ever done. This is not a story about wasted years. The achievements were real and so were the experiences.

What was misshapen was the reason underneath them. I wasn't doing those things only because I loved them. I was doing them, at least partly, because I had absorbed a quiet belief that achieving them would finally make me into the kind of person who deserved to be loved, accepted, and understood.

Said plainly, the belief was this. If I achieve enough, then I will be enough.

That is a very different motivation from “I love this and I want to do it.”

You can do the same thing for either reason. The doing looks identical from the outside. The cost on the inside is wildly different.

Why this took a decade to see clearly

The reason it took me until my mid-thirties to see this, even after the first crack at NASA, is that the search disguises itself extraordinarily well.

In an engineering culture, “I am working very hard toward a difficult goal” is so universally praised that nobody, including you, ever asks why. The reasons all sound the same from outside. You are driven. You are committed. You finish what you start.

It took multiple inputs, in roughly the same year, to finally make the underlying pattern visible. Couples counseling, where the same dynamic kept showing up in a relationship I cared about. Coaching training, where I started learning to read what was happening inside me with more resolution than just “good” or “bad.” Moving abroad with my family and watching, day by day, what actually made my wife and kids feel close to me.

In parallel, I was building rockets for a living. Doing exactly the kind of work my younger self had imagined would finally settle the question of whether I was good enough.

It did not settle the question. It was never going to. The settling was an inside job all along.

Hint: it was never the achievements. It was being fully in the present. Not turning the past over, the regret or the highlight reel. Not rehearsing the future, the worry or the daydream. Just being inside the hour I was actually in. The dinner without my phone. Going out with the kids after work. The bedtime where I wasn't rushing. Even at work, standing in front of the real space hardware, what lands is not that I got there. It is being there, taking in what is in front of me.

What I now believe

I now believe, with a confidence that surprises me, that none of the things I have spent my life chasing actually generate the quality I was hoping they would generate.

That is not a depressing realization. It's a freeing one.

It means that the question of whether I am good enough does not depend on the next astronaut selection. It does not depend on the next title. It does not depend on whether anyone in my family ever fully understands who I am or what I do. It does not depend on getting to space.

It depends on whether I can stay present today. Whether I can sit with what I like and what I dislike, and let all of it be there. Whether I have noticed what I was feeling instead of overriding it. Whether I have been present with my wife, with my kids, and in my work. Whether I have been honest with myself about what was draining my energy and what was giving it back.

That's it. That is my whole spec. Yours might read differently. It is worth working out what is on it.

When I do those things, no external rejection can take much away from me. When I don't do those things, no external achievement can put much in.

This was good news to get about my own life. It is also, more or less, what every great spiritual tradition has been trying to say for a few thousand years. The engineer in me is amused that the answer sat in the library the whole time, and I reached it through the side door: psychology, somatics, an astronaut's aside on a tour, a Jim Carrey monologue.

What this has not changed

This is the place where I could tie a neat bow on it. I am not going to.

I am still going to apply for the next astronaut selection. I still love my work. I am still, by most reasonable definitions, an ambitious person.

The pattern has not flipped. The motivation underneath has shifted, slowly, from “if I do this, then I will finally be enough” to something more like “I am enough either way, and I would love to do this.”

This is a small linguistic difference and an enormous existential one. The first version makes every project a referendum on my worth. The second version lets a project just be a project.

Most days I land somewhere in between. I am not done with the inner work. Few people ever fully are. The direction is right, though, and that is its own kind of relief.

What the search cost

Here is the part I think about most.

For most of my twenties and early thirties, I was largely absent from the present moment. My attention was almost always somewhere else. Ahead of me, in the next application, the next degree, the next station on the way to enoughness. Or behind me, turning over the last thing that had not gone the way I wanted. The actual hour I was in, the conversation I was having, the person in front of me, all of it was background to the search.

I have the memories of those years. What I do not have is the experience of having been inside them. It would have been a lot more fun to live those hours than to spend them worrying about the future or replaying the past. The cost of the search is not just energy. It is presence. It is the specific seconds in which life was actually happening while I was somewhere else.

This is the part that motivates me now. Not as guilt. Just as data. I would like the next decade to look different. More here. More breath. More noticing. More appreciating the absurdly good things already in my life.

I am still bad at this. But I am bad at this in a way that is honest, instead of bad at it in a way that does not know it is bad.

If you recognize yourself

If any of this sounds familiar, I want to offer a small thing.

You probably will not stop achieving. You probably should not stop achieving. The skills you have built are real and useful. The world is genuinely better because people who care a lot finish difficult things.

What can shift, if you let it, is the sentence underneath.

The sentence is usually some version of if I do this, then I will be enough. The work is to slowly, gently, replace it with I am enough, and I would love to do this.

The replacement does not happen by force. You cannot will yourself out of the terrible search by telling yourself to stop searching. That is just adding a new search. The replacement happens through the quiet, slow work the search was always trying to avoid. Sitting with your own thoughts and feelings, the uncomfortable ones included, and noticing they are not you. They are weather. The sky does not become the storm. It clears, it rains, and the sky holds all of it. Letting yourself be seen by people who do not need you to be impressive. Therapy or coaching, if that fits. Watching, with curiosity instead of judgment, what your nervous system does when you are not achieving anything.

This is, on paper, the least efficient work you will ever do. There are no credentials at the end. No one will applaud. Most of it is invisible.

It is also, in my experience so far, the only thing that actually answers the question the search was trying to answer.

The search was looking for enoughness somewhere up ahead. It was never up ahead. It was here the whole time, in the ordinary hour I kept rushing past.

Frequently asked questions

Isn't ambition a good thing? Why frame it as a problem?

Ambition is fine. This is not a story against achievement. The problem is the sentence underneath it. “If I do this, then I will be enough” turns every project into a test of your worth. “I am enough, and I would love to do this” lets a project just be a project. Same work, very different cost on the inside.

How can I tell if I'm achieving for love or for the search?

Honestly, this is hard. In my own life the two motives braid together, and most days I cannot cleanly pull them apart. One question helps more than most, a framing I picked up from Chris Williamson: if there were no money in it, no fame, and no applause from anyone, would you still do it? The things that survive that question are closer to love. The ones that quietly lose their pull without an audience were probably more about the search.

Isn't this just impostor syndrome?

Related, not the same. Impostor syndrome is the fear of being found out as not good enough at a task. The terrible search is deeper. It is the belief that a task, any task, done well enough, will finally make you a person who deserves love. Impostor syndrome doubts the work. The search doubts the worth.

What does the inner work actually look like?

Less glamorous than it sounds. Mostly it is learning to stay present whatever your thoughts and mood are doing. Not fixing the uncomfortable ones, not chasing the good ones. Letting them be there, treating them as ordinary weather, and getting curious about them instead of judging them. Noticing what you actually feel instead of overriding it. Letting people see you when you are not being impressive. On paper it is the least efficient work you will ever do. No credential, no applause. In my experience it is also the only thing that answers the question the search was asking.

Did you stop chasing big goals?

No. I will apply for the next astronaut selection. I still love my work. The pattern did not flip. What shifted, slowly, is the motivation underneath, from “if I do this I will finally be enough” to “I am enough either way, and I would love to do this.” A small difference in words. An enormous difference in how it feels to live.

The story that achievement would finally make me enough is the kind of inherited requirement I write about in Don't Build an SLS. Learning to read what was actually happening inside me, instead of overriding it, is the subject of Tight Chest. Less Tight Chest. If this essay found something, the Essential Self Diagnostic is fifteen questions that take about sixty seconds. A starting point for noticing what in your life you are doing for love and what for the search.