The Night We Turned Off the Lights and Looked Up

The milky way galaxy

It is currently 03:26 am, and the sandman has eluded me once again. I step out barefoot to let the midnight chill caress my face and the grass prickle my feet. I look up at the moonless sky, and I am greeted by the North Star, polaris, the big dipper, and his neighbours. An underwhelming night sky, my mind wonders.

Imagine a world where, for just one night, every city turned off its lights. No neon signs, no street lamps or security lights, no towering buildings glowing into the night. Just darkness. Pure, unfiltered, cosmic darkness.

If that were to happen, an estimated three billion people would see the Milky Way galaxy in its full splendor for the very first time. Millions of stars would pierce through the night sky, painting a celestial masterpiece above us. And in that moment, we’d be reminded of something glaring… how vast the universe is, how tiny our Earth is, and how minuscule we, along with our posturings, our imagined self-importance, our problems, truly are.

Feb 14, 1990 — Photo of the earth taken by the Voyager 1 spaceprobe, 6 billion kilometers away

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” — Carl Sagan

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. Too often, we live in the confines of our own manufactured glow, distracted by artificial lights, both literal and metaphorical. Our lives are cluttered with deadlines, responsibilities, and an insatiable chase for material success. But if we could just take a step back, slow down, and embrace the vastness above us, we might see things differently. Perhaps we’d realize that we are mere travelers in the grand journey of existence.

I like to think of our lives as a rock being thrown across a lake. Picture God flinging us across the surface, and just as we leave his hand, he yells, “Enjoy the view!”. We soar for a while, skipping, experiencing highs and lows, before inevitably sinking into the water, our journey coming to an end. But what if, instead of obsessing over when and how we’ll sink, we just admired the view? What if we simply took in the vastness, the beauty, and the fleeting nature of it all?

Maybe, just maybe, all we need to do is be that rock, gazing at the night sky before we hit the water.

In the spirit of this grand realization, I formally propose a global initiative. An annual night of darkness, where city lights go out, and we all get a chance to look up and remember just how small we are. Someone start the petition, I’ll sign it first. What do you think?