When I first watched Cosmos back in February 2021, I didn’t realise it would become one of the most comforting things I’d ever seen. I had just turned 14 at that time, and there was something about Carl Sagan’s gentle and reverent voice that made me ponder about life in a way I didn’t expect.

There’s a moment in Pale Blue Dot, just a few minutes long, that I come back to time and time again. That photo of Earth, suspended in a sunbeam, barely a pixel across… it reminds me of how small we really are. Not in a depressing way, but in the most peaceful way imaginable.

When you’re zoomed all the way out, past the noise, past the pressure, past all of life’s problems, you realise how much of what hurts you now won’t even register on the cosmic scale. The arguments, the grades, the things people say, the things we say to ourselves. All of it becomes fleeting, tiny, dust in sunlight. And yet in that tiny speck, we find meaning and love. We try, often mess up, and hold onto hope, not the universe expects us to, but because we can choose to. 

The universe doesn’t owe us anything, it’s not keeping score. It doesn’t hand out rewards for effort, or punish us for failing, it just is. And that doesn’t make our actions meaningless, it makes them matter even more. Choosing to take responsibility in a universe that owes us nothing, to care, to create and to be kind becomes an act of humility.

Maybe, that’s what makes life so precious, the fact that it’s not owed, not guaranteed, which means that simply being here, and being there for one another is enough.