Have you ever lay in the middle a field in the middle of the night with a bunch of people you have just met, along with others you are unfamiliar with, and then suddenly, the power turned off, plunging you into darkness?

In this early morning two years ago, I saw the beauty of the universe from our school field.

I had just met schoolmates from other colleges through a friend during a university event (Magnificat) that involved staying at school overnight. As a senior student, it wasn’t mandatory for me to spend the night, but my younger sister was there with her classmates and mine left me because they said they changed their minds. Of course, I was shy to ask my sister if I could hang out with them so I set out and looked for some friends from other courses.

Fortunately, I immediately saw one and asked if I could stick with him for the rest of the night; he said I could. I thought that he was with our other friends. Turns out that he brought his own. I was nervous at first but as soon as we got introduced to each other, they immediately accepted me. We spent a few hours playing various games until the event’s director called for lights out.

We weren’t allowed to sleep inside rooms for the purpose of coming together as one. We lay down jackets (some brought blankets) on the grass and we lay down, using our bags as pillows. There was still buzzing around the field, banters heard from every direction.

Then, without warning, the power went out, illumination gone from every source of light and eliciting small screams from a few of my company.

I heard every sharp intake of breath and gasps of surprise as stars peppered every inch of the black, cloudless canvas of the sky. There was the curve of the moon visible above us. A few shooting stars zoomed in and out of sight. I could see Orion’s belt from my right-hand side and the Big Dipper from the other.

I wished I had a nice camera with me to capture its pure elegance. I wished that my eyes could take a video of I was seeing. I wished I had a recorder to document the words of appreciation spoken by those who surrounded me.

In that moment, it seemed like I could feel the Earth move and rotate beneath us.

In that moment, I saw the breathtaking beauty of creation.

In that moment, I questioned how people could not appreciate the place we live in.

In that moment, I felt very, very much alive.