The Great Optical Illusion

If you want to get the full benefit of this new thread of postings, please go back and reread the July 30^th posting about getting hit by a bus.

I once came upon a mountain lion while hiking in the Rockies. We approached him from upwind, that is the breeze was blowing from him to us so he couldn’t smell us as we approached. His reaction upon seeing us was interesting. He ran an almost perfect half circle around us through the woods in order to get downwind from us. With the breeze now blowing from us to him he was able to use his dominant sense, he sense of smell, to “see” what we were. Having taken a good whiff of us, he then bounded off into the woods. The important point to note is that he could see us and he could hear us, but in order to be really sure he had to smell us. His sense of smell was his main way of interacting with the surrounding world.

The sense of smell is the most important sense for most mammals, but not for man. We depend primarily on sight. You might hear the voice of someone coming up behind you, and you might think that you recognize that voice, but if you want to be sure you will turn around and look at the person.

This visual thing works to our great disadvantage when it comes to dealing with death. We go into a funeral home and view the remains of the dear departed. We look at the face and automatically compare the way that face looks now with the way that face looked while the person was still living. And as we do this, unless we are careful, we are fooled by the great optical illusion that is death.

Think of how many thousands of times you have looked upon this face while the person was still living. You could tell so much about the condition of the person by looking at their face. Was he stressed or happy? Did he look tired or sick? Every single time up to that first viewing of the body in the funeral home your eyes were telling you the truth about the condition of the person you were seeing. Your brain does this automatically; you don’t even have to think about it.

But when it comes to dealing with death, it is imperative that we do think about it. No matter how skillful the art of the mortician, the face that you are looking at doesn’t look good. It is lifeless and unresponsive. It looks like the person is dead. Let me say that again: it looks like the person is dead. So now, for the first time in the thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of times you’ve looked at that person, your eyes are lying to you. It’s an optical illusion. The person is not dead. In fact, you aren’t looking at the person at all. All your looking at is the body they used to live in.

My first encounter with human death was the passing of my grandmother. I remember being very angry and walking away from the group at the graveside service. I remember thinking to myself, people ought not to end up like this. I was fooled by the optical illusion. My mind interpreted the message from my eyes and my emotions responded to it. Grandma didn’t look right. She looked horrible. She looked dead. And so my emotions responded to what my eyes were seeing. Once again, we do this without thinking about it. But it is imperative that we do think about it.

My grandmother did not, in fact, look like she was dead. This is because she wasn’t dead. Grandma was alive. The only problem was that I could no longer see her. All I could see was her body. Her body was dead and so my emotions responded to what my eyes were seeing. I failed to analyze the situation and remind myself that for the first time in my life I couldn’t trust what my eyes were telling me when I looked at Grandma. That wasn’t Grandma any more. Grandma wasn’t there. Grandma was still alive.