I don’t remember exactly when I got into space. It feels like it was always there, somewhere in the back of my mind.
When I was younger, planets and stars were pretty much my whole world. I used to look at the sky almost every day, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. I had apps for tracking planets and satellites too. I remember installing an ISS tracker and checking when the International Space Station would pass above us.
I still remember the first time I saw it. It was around 3 AM, and I was standing on the balcony with my mom. I had checked the tracker and told her to look in a specific direction because something was going to appear there.
We waited.
Then suddenly, there it was. Just a bright dot moving quickly across the sky.
That was it. Nothing dramatic. Just a tiny moving light. But for me, it was a wow moment.
I knew there were people inside that tiny dot, flying above us in space, while I was standing there on a balcony looking at them from Earth.
I don’t think I understood it back then, but all of these little moments affected me deeply.
There’s a strange feeling you get when you keep looking at the sky for long enough. You start realizing how small we are. How much exists outside our little lives. Stars, planets, galaxies, satellites, and probably things we still know nothing about.
And I think simply looking at all of that makes you think bigger.
Not smarter. Not more philosophical. Just bigger. Your mind moves away from your small daily world for a moment.
It made me feel that there is something much bigger than us. That thought taught me humility.
It’s one of the reasons I really hate arrogance. It feels strange to act like you’re above everyone else when we are all living on this tiny planet inside something so unbelievably huge.
It also changed the way I look at my own problems. Sometimes a problem feels like the biggest thing in the world because it is the biggest thing in your head at that moment. Then you look at the sky, and somehow it becomes smaller.
Not meaningless. Just smaller. You remember that your life is bigger than this one bad day, this one problem, this one argument, or this one thing you’re worried about.
And above all, looking at space made me think a lot about Allah. The scale of it. The beauty. The details. The things we understand and the things we don’t.
Sometimes I just look at the sky and think about how beautiful all of this is, and how beautiful the One who created it must be.
Looking down
These days, I notice that a lot of people don’t seem comfortable doing nothing for a few minutes. Just standing somewhere quiet, looking at the stars, and letting your mind wander.
No phone. No music. No scrolling. Nothing to keep your brain busy. Just you, the sky, and that inner voice that we usually try to silence.
I think we need moments like this. Moments where ideas can spread out in your head. Where you can think about things you’ve been avoiding. Where some of the thoughts you’ve been carrying finally have enough space to come out.
I don’t mean this as a judgment of anyone. But sometimes I find it hard to understand how someone can have no interest at all in looking beyond the little world around them.
There is something strange to me about living your whole life looking only at what is directly in front of you. Work. Money. Things you want to buy. What other people are doing. Notifications. Problems. Deadlines.
All the small things we somehow convince ourselves are everything. There is so much more outside of that.
And I’m not saying everyone needs to become interested in astronomy. You don’t need a telescope. You don’t need to know the names of the stars. You don’t need to understand planets, galaxies, or physics.
Just look.
I really believe that simply looking at the night sky for a while makes you think bigger.
When your whole vision is limited to your room, your phone, your work, and the material things around you, it becomes easy to feel like that is the whole world. Then you look up. And suddenly there is this massive sky above you.
Thousands of stars. Things so far away that the distances barely make sense.
And you’re just standing there looking at them. It changes your perspective, even if only for a few minutes.
Five minutes
You can make it a small habit. Go to your balcony, your rooftop, an empty street, or anywhere you can see the sky at night. Put your phone away. Don’t take a picture. Don’t open an app. Just give yourself five minutes.
Look at the sky. Let your mind go wherever it wants to go. Think about your life. Think about your problems. Think about how small we are and, at the same time, how lucky we are to be here.
Alive. Able to see all of this. Able to wonder about it.
The sky has always been there.
Maybe we just forgot to look up.