Sagan speaks not merely to optimism about discovery, but to a peculiar humility—the recognition that the universe owes us nothing, that revelations arrive on their own schedule, indifferent to our readiness. What separates this from cheerful fortune-telling is his insistence on the *waiting*, that passive quality that demands we remain attentive rather than aggressive. A laboratory technician who has spent three years refining an experiment only to stumble upon an anomaly completely unrelated to her hypothesis understands this intimately; the breakthrough came not from force but from sustained, patient presence. It is an invitation to live as a student rather than a conqueror.