The spark of an illusion
It's a quirky flaw in human nature that we trust our eyes as honest messengers, when really, they're like storytellers, often shaping what we see to fit our deepest wishes. The ancient Greeks already understood that our eyes often trick us, Descartes revisited this in his meditations and modern scientists are usually as aware of the unrealibility of our eyes and more importantly of our brains that interpret what our eyes are seeing, as they are of the fact that water freezes at 0°C. And yet I believe many of us are greatly unappreciative of the power that illusions, our brains often let our eyes see, can have on our souls, causing within them sparks that can turn into our destinies.
Take my time on Colorado's wide-open plains: I saw an incredibly large silver moon—which scientists say is a lifeless rock hundreds of thousands of miles away—looming so huge and close that I felt I could almost poke it with my walking stick. Back in my younger days, this view turned into a reflection; if the moon here in the west of USA feels like it's just across a nearby hill, then reaching it seems no tougher than a quick hike at dawn.
We're all shaped by our surroundings, as I've often pondered. In Europe's tight, wooded valleys, the moon is a humble glow, a simple "dot in the night" that only shines bright when it's way up high and alone. The moon is of course very far away from our planet and it doesn't matter from which continent or country we look it, the distance is basically always the same and yet our perception of it is based on the surroundings we see it in. Out in the expansive American West, the land's vastness tricks the brain into seeing the moon as something grand and maybe useful. When the moon climbs behind a sky-high mountain, our spirit won't let it stay a far-off speck. It turns into a goal we can chase. That's where the "Moon Illusion" stops being just a mind game and sparks real human courage.
Milutin Milanković, with whom I share the first name, was a sharp thinker who mapped out Earth's slow dances—its tilts and orbital stretches that control our seasons—and who spent his days crunching numbers on cosmic scales that span millennia, far beyond a single lifetime. Yet even a genius like him would agree that, for someone standing in the dirt, what feels real is what counts. If the moon seems within reach from a rocky Colorado ledge, it's because the world around us sets the stage big enough to fuel our wonder. It then feels real and finally becomes real.
No surprise that movies, our modern dream-weavers, love playing up this enlargement. Picture that kid from E. T. and his starry visitor, silhouetted against a moon so massive it defies logic. Spielberg, whose name consists of two German words "Spiel" for game and "Berg" for mountain found perfect surroundings in California for his shot and then tricked our eyes a little bit by having the camera standing very far away and zooming in so as to make the moon appear even larger, although I must accentuate that in my experience and memory in Colorado the moon was even larger than in Spielberg's movie. This isn't the astronomer's cold, measured moon, but the one that tugs at our emotions—the friendly neighbor we yearn to visit.
Montaigne often asked "what do I know?" as I do as well, when reflecting the thoughts that I have and think... Our brains, these clever "story-making machines" seem often to care more about feelings and what's doable than what's strictly accurate. We launched rockets to that glowing rock not because we nailed the exact distance, but because, from the perfect spot, it felt near enough to grasp.
Watson, in the joke with Sherlock Holmes that I have in my website, misses the stolen tent because he's lost in star facts and wonders. Our eyes' bold tricks often push us toward ambition, but real progress comes from blending views: the scientist's precision with the dreamer's reach, the masculine phalic energy with the feminine grounding force and of course our Eastern preference for feeling and our western preference for fact.
Which distant dreams can we next turn into shared realities that lift us all?