Do You Believe In Other Life?

A simple question can crack the sky wide open.

“Do you believe there is other life out there in the Universe?” my father asked me.

We were sitting on the shallow steps of my family’s pool, the night pressing softly around us. I was just a boy, ten years old, letting the water run through my fingers like liquid time. I wasn’t thinking about anything. Not aliens. Not God. Not even the stars above. I was still small enough to believe the world was only as big as my neighborhood and the love of my family.

But my father was looking up, beyond the dark, and I could feel something tugging at his spirit. He wasn't asking a trivia question. He was trying to hand me a key.

I shrugged, innocent and uncertain. “I don’t know.”

He smiled like a man who had already answered that question for himself. “Boy, I tell you… there has to be a Creator. All this didn’t come outta nothing… you know?”

I didn’t know. But something in his voice made me want to.

He nudged me again. “Marc?”

“Yes,” I said, still swishing water around my hands.

“Do you know the difference between a star and a planet?”

“No.”

“Well, stars twinkle, and planets stay solid. Look.” He pointed to the sky, searching for his proof. “That one there, that’s Venus. Brightest planet in our solar system. You see how it doesn’t blink?”

I looked up, squinting. “Ohhh… yeah. I see it.”

And just like that, the Universe introduced itself. That simple shimmer that didn’t flicker was no longer just a pretty dot in the sky. It was a planet. It was real. And I saw it—really saw it—for the first time.

“Do you know what a star is?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s a sun, just millions of light years away. That’s why they look so small. But they’re enormous. Blazing. Alive.”

“All of them?” I asked.

He nodded. “Every star you see is a sun. And they say there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.”

“What beach?” I asked.

“All of them,” he laughed.

I couldn’t imagine that. I still can’t. But I tried. I stared into that velvet sky, eyes wide, heart open. And then he leaned in, like he was telling me a sacred secret.

“They say half of those stars have solar systems of their own. Just like ours. With planets spinning around them. So with all those planets out there, don’t you think at least one of them is the right distance from its sun, just like Earth is from ours?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“And if water is what made life possible here, don’t you think there could be water somewhere else too? And if there’s water... maybe there’s life.”

Another nod. “Yes.”

And then came the question again, but this time, it echoed through my soul like a bell.

“Now… do you believe there is other life in the Universe?”

I looked into the sky, and I swear something looked back.

“Yes.”

That was the night it all began.

My world grew ten sizes larger in the span of a conversation. Something had cracked open inside me, and the light rushed in. I couldn’t look at the stars the same after that. They weren’t ornaments. They were destinations. Suns. Cradles of potential. Maybe homes.

From that moment, I was on a journey. One that would take me far beyond textbooks, beyond Sunday sermons, beyond the gravitational pull of small-minded answers. A journey into questions so big they broke language.