The night sky is a reminder that ordinary eyesight can reach things impossibly far away.

Standing outside on a clear night, unaided, you are receiving light that left its source long before you existed. No instrument, no training, nothing but the equipment you were born with, reaching across distances the mind cannot really hold. The scale is difficult to feel precisely because it is available every night and costs nothing.

Go out and look, deliberately, for ten minutes, away from lights if you can manage it. Not to think important thoughts, only to let the scale register. It reliably puts the day’s proportions back in order in a way that reasoning about perspective never quite does.