Change Means Growth

Nightfall is a novel written by Isaac Asimov that tells a story of a planet known as Lagash. This planet is surrounded by 6 suns, and therefore, does not experience nighttime. An archaeologist discovers that every 2000 years approximately, the existing civilization of that time collapses. Meanwhile, a group known as the "Cult" believes that the world will be destroyed because of darkness, wherein stars will appear and unleash fire. An astronomer connects the two and concludes that every 2049 years, the sun is eclipsed, thus causing "night". He theorized that the night horrified the people, causing them to panic and look desperately for a light source, so they started fires and this resulted to the destruction of the civilization. Because of this, the scientists prepared the people for the phenomenon. It ends with the occurrence of the night but unexpectedly, it wasn't the night that horrified people. It's when they see the stars and realize how big the universe is, which makes them horrified and thus caused yet another collapse of a civilization.

After contemplating about the novel, I realized that the readers can perceive it in a lot of ways. But I'd like to think that each element of the story represents our normal lives as humans. We live in a big world full of uncertainties. We live without knowing what happens next. No matter how prepared we are, there are times when life happens and we're suddenly in a situation we didn't want to be in or a situation too good to be true that it doesn't feel real at all. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, and we try to predict things to come and prepare for it the best way possible. Like in the novel, they predicted the destruction of their world and tried to prepare for it. Unexpectedly though, things we didn't thought would happen usually happens. It takes us by surprise but we can't do anything about it. Either we live with it or we don't. In the novel, they didn't. They didn't accept the inevitable change. But in reality, there are these changes that come in our lives and we have to accept it, because these changes mean growth. They might be as horrifying as the revelation in the novel, but without these changes, we're stuck in a state where there is no leveling up. So we should learn how to accept change and accept that no matter how hard we try, we can never truly prepare ourselves from what's about to come.

Chrystine L. Cobarrubias
2013 - 59986