What makes staring at the stars feel comforting or terrifying?

[Stephen16]

I was walking home last night and saw a person sitting alone on a bench, just staring at the stars. It made me wonder if they were feeling a profound sense of connection to the universe, or a crushing sense of their own smallness within it. I can't decide if that feeling of cosmic awe is fundamentally comforting or terrifying.

[MadisonDJ]

Cosmic awe slips in softly and then tightens when you really notice how big the night is. Some nights it feels like a warm invitation to belong, other times it makes your own small place in the world seem loud in its emptiness.

[Justin.L]

Two threads pull at you at once a soft sense of scale and a stubborn need to know what it means. The mind treats grandeur as comfort when memory holds safe images and as threat when the self feels exposed.

[Grace20]

Maybe the bench sitter is not having a grand dialogue with the cosmos but just letting thoughts loop while breathing slow with the cold air.

[NoraOH]

I get wary of reading too much into stillness maybe the night is just a pause not a prophecy.

[PatrickLL]

Perhaps the frame itself matters less than the moment of noticing a sky that makes you pause and listen.

[MichaelT]

From a writing craft angle the gap between the bright sky and the quiet bench invites a reader to supply meaning and that recipe is where cosmic awe or dread sneaks in.

[Jonathan.T]

Calling it the sublime signals a category that brushes both beauty and danger without explaining it fully.