On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed a packed crowd at Rice University’s stadium in Houston to make a bold proposal. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things,” he said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

This, of course, made no sense at all. First of all, the US barely even had a space program in 1962 and Russia, our only competition, had sent the first man into space only the year before. Was Kennedy nuts? Plus, landing on the moon and returning astronauts safely to Earth was going to cost something like $175 billion. And for what? Was there gold on the moon? Was there life on the moon? Was there even Swiss cheese on the moon? No, we were going to the moon “because it is hard.”

President Kennedy’s courageous “moonshot” speech has inspired generations of inventors, adventurers and idiots. Because something is hard is a perfectly good reason NOT to do it. But humans are funny like that. Galileo risked his reputation and his life by insisting that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Ferdinand Magellan showed he could go east by sailing west, proving the world is round. In 1923, when George Mallory was asked why he had wanted to climb Mount Everest, he famously replied, “Because it was there.” Which, in all fairness, could be said of, well, everything. And most of those things are not nearly as cold as Everest. But such is the stubborn cussedness of human beings.

Yesterday, I decided to move our refrigerator. Not because it was easy. But because it was there. And because we bought a new one and there wasn’t room in our kitchen for another 300-pound appliance. How was I supposed to pick up this ancient monstrosity, take it down the stairs, across a bumpy lawn, load it into the truck and drive it to our place in Lisbon? I had no idea. Was it impossible? Would it lead to personal growth and understanding? Embarrassment? Permanent injury? I only knew that it was the task that lay before me. Not all of us are destined for greatness. But moving a refrigerator could be my moonshot.

After constructing a complicated system of ramps and pulleys, I managed to get the giant beast down the stairs and into the truck with my pride and all my spinal disks intact. Then, imagine my surprise when I got to Lisbon and found the frig was too wide for the door. Was I discouraged? Yeah, kind of. But I removed the entrance door and tried again. The handles still wouldn’t fit through. Okay, I removed one of the refrigerator doors. So far, so good. But the other door remained connected by a plastic tube for the ice maker. I knew if I cut it, I’d never be able to fix it. It was getting dark and I was out of ideas. Houston, we have a problem.

Then, I thought of YouTube. It turns out there is a video that shows how to disconnect the tube by pushing in one end of the connector. Was it cheating? Was it less heroic? The navigator Magellan knew it doesn’t matter which direction you start off on as long as you get there in the end.