There’s a story from my childhood that feels like my story, even though it took a while for my body to catch up. Jing Di Zhi Wa (井底之蛙), translated into The Frog at the Bottom of the Well, is about a frog at the bottom of a well. It’s quite literal. The lesson is in what the frog sees when they look up. We the reader know there is much more to the world than a pinhole of blue sky, depending on how deep the well goes. But of course, the frog doesn’t.

I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself outside of Chinese fables, in science, the pursuit of travel and wonder, in books and platitudes (you know the one: walk a mile in someone else’s shoes), and in algorithms. We are all frogs, or shadows, or chickens, or ourselves a generation ago. As technology continues to displace that sense of reality, what we once thought was a solid and unmoving state, we become simultaneously more aware yet stuck in a collective paralysis.

When so much is real and possible, it matters less how much we see but the way we look, touch, smell, and taste. How deep, how strong, how light, how tiny, how big, we can be made to feel. And sometimes that requires us to get a little bit closer, or stand a lot further from where we've been.