If you ask me, one of the simplest luxuries in life is sitting out at night and looking up at the stars. Recently though, this was ubiquitously encouraged by various Astronomical agencies due to the annual arrival of The Perseid Meteor Shower, which to many is the all-time favorite meteor shower of the year. Being interested in space and the stars, I decided to stay up and sit on the back porch of my home in Alaska to gaze up at the stars in search of falling meteorites. Truthfully though, I gazed up in search of anything. To many people, answers lie in the stars; Astrology, the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on human affairs and the natural world. Others find calmness in star gazing, a sense of peace as one takes a moment to relax and forget about their day. To me, gazing at the stars at night brings a sense of hope.

Imagine a grain of sand on a remote beach in Hawaii. Small, relatively insignificant, one of millions. Now imagine how small that grain of sand is when you compare it to every grain of sand on every beach in the world. Now every grain of sand in the Pacific Ocean. In every ocean. Now imagine that everything and everyone you’ve ever known, thought of, dreamt about, or read about in a history book. Every single person who ever lived or breathed did so on that lone grain of sand. Mathematically speaking, that’s Us: The Blue Planet, Terra, Home. Earth. A tiny mote of dust floating in a vast, continuously expanding space with a virtually uncountable amount of other motes of dust. Scientists say it would take someone roughly 19 centuries to count the stars in our Galaxy. Our Galaxy. There are roughly one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. And yet everything we have ever known has come as a result of this one “unique” planet. Why does gazing at the stars give me hope? It makes me believe that the chances are not at all small that at that exact same moment, that exact same time, someone or something distanced over the vastness of space was doing the exact same thing. I wonder what their thoughts are, what does their sky look like, do they look anything like me? I gain a sense of hope in that life in the universe must be elsewhere. And so long as there is life in the universe, it is impossible to lose hope entirely.