Author: Sia Rawat, Class XII D
I said it once, not because I had a rocket ready but because Saturn felt like the only place far enough. Far enough from the 6 am alarms, far enough from the assignments piling up, far enough from the late night spirals about whether you said the wrong thing in a five-word text. It was a joke. Kind of. Maybe I was too influenced by SZA singing “Life’s better on Saturn.” But Saturn wasn’t a planet or a song at that moment. It was an escape hatch.
And then, months later, came something I wasn’t prepared for. “I hope you find someone, or people, worth going to Saturn with.”
It sounded simple, but it stuck. Because isn’t that what all of us are really chasing? Not grades, not likes, not followers, but people who make you forget, even for a second, that Earth feels so heavy.
The thing is, we don’t live simple lives anymore. Gen Z feels everything at full volume. One text, “seen at 11:37 pm,” can ruin your entire night. The difference between “okay” and “k” can sit in your chest for weeks like an unpaid bill. We’re dramatic, yes, but we’re also painfully aware. Hyper-aware. Every glance, every word, every silence feels magnified under some imaginary space microscope. No wonder Saturn sounds easier.
But let’s not romanticize it too much. Saturn is, scientifically speaking, a giant ball of gas. If you really think about it, it’s useless for survival. You’d get there, stare at the rings and then wonder why no one told you they’re basically cosmic jewelry. Gorgeous, but completely unhelpful when what you really need is someone who doesn’t flinch when you say, “I am not okay, but I don’t wanna be alone.”
And yet, Saturn lingers. Because what we want isn’t really Saturn, it’s permission. Permission to drop the act, to admit we’re soft even when we’d rather be sharp, to let someone see the cracks without rushing to glue them shut. Vulnerability feels like standing on stage without remembering your lines. It’s terrifying, but it’s also the only way anyone believes you’re human.
Nietzsche once said, “Invisible threads are the strongest ties.” Maybe Saturn is just shorthand for those invisible threads. The unexpected friendships, the “khaana khaa le” from your mom, the people who make you laugh so hard you forget you were ever afraid to speak in the first place.
We might not have Saturn. But we do have these strange, messy, sometimes painful connections that keep Earth from collapsing under its own weight. Sometimes it’s a sarcastic remark that lands harder than it should. Sometimes it’s just the quiet hope tucked inside a sentence like, “I hope you find someone, or people, worth going to Saturn with.”
Earth has its own kind of magic. Sunrises spilling gold over restless oceans, forests that breathe for us, monsoons that carry the smell of wet soil and skies so stubbornly beautiful they make you forget, for a moment, about everything else. Saturn might glitter from afar, but only Earth knows how to hold us.
So, is life better on Saturn? Probably not. But maybe the point was never about actually getting there. Maybe it’s about finding the people who make Earth feel a little more bearable, even when everything else is spiraling.
And maybe that’s enough. Because until Elon Musk figures out the whole space travel thing, I guess we’re here. On Earth. With each other. Looking up at Saturn and thinking, “yeah, maybe someday.”
