When the sky turns upside down

The Epistemology of Seeing: Between Reality, Perception and the Presumption of Knowledge

In a world that is becoming increasingly fast-paced and illusory, perhaps taking off our shoes and learning to walk barefoot again has almost become a duty. In a sense, we are all left bare, and there are no longer grandmothers to crochet our socks for us. Meanwhile, the increasingly extreme climate no longer sends chills through our feet alone, but gives us shivers of an entirely different kind.

When talking to people, one senses that the temperature has changed. Yet everyone attributes this change to the warming of the Earth, because that is the climate narrative continually presented to us. To me, however, it seems that it is our own temperature that has changed. Human beings are thermometers in their own right, designed to adapt to a multitude of environments. And if today we seem no longer able to do so, perhaps we should ask ourselves the opposite question: what if it were not only the external climate that had changed, but our own bodily temperature as well? True balance does not lie in being unfamiliar with extremes, but in learning not to be ruled by either of them.

A world without phones and satellites, without chips and cables connected to our bodies, has become almost impossible to reach. We are modern slaves, bound by invisible chains, fuelling currents of power that increase the wealth of the elites while, at the same time, affecting the regulation of our senses, our temperature and our brain functions. They have taken our shoes away, along with part of our dignity as human beings. Little by little, even our health seems to be slipping away, while we are offered solutions supposedly designed to compensate for what we have lost. Cases of cancer and heart problems are on the rise and, all of a sudden, even differences are being medicalised. It is only natural, then, to wonder whether a society that tends to reduce every form of diversity to a category in need of correction might eventually come to perceive independent thought as a threat to its own equilibrium.

And all of this unfolds before our eyes every single day. I made a promise to some people: to fill the world with letters, because some of them have already found their way into hearts and illuminated them. Perhaps it is precisely this minority that makes the difference in a vast, open-air theatre, where there are those who would like to extinguish even that light, going so far as to suggest that it needs to be “cured”.

But can something truly be cured when it is not an illness, but simply another way of seeing the world?

It is like being an extreme surfer or mountaineer: when the destination is part of one's very essence, one tries a thousand times, falls, gets back up and sets off again, until the summit is reached. And if someone cuts the ropes or takes away the oxygen, there may always be another source of energy capable of sustaining the climb: willpower, that inner force which cannot always be measured or contained.

There is someone who, one day, left me with a lesson that was destined to stay: wherever the path may lead, one must carry scraps of light, keep little fragments of sky close, and learn to fly higher than the wind, because... someone believes in you.

And whenever the way is lost, gather a star to find your direction again.

This is the very melody of artists: those who do not simply inhabit the world, but question it, move through it and, through their forms of expression, transform the way it is seen. They reveal it from another perspective, rewriting its pages and bringing to light what others are not yet able to see or, perhaps, will never be able to perceive. This is where the meaning of every journey lies: not simply in travelling further, but in showing that unexplored horizons still exist.

Beware of those who reply that “the world never changes anyway”, because change never begins with the entire world, but with what moves within each individual human being.

“Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.”

(Qur'an, 13:11)

Oppressors believe they can live forever. Perhaps, with the help of bionic body parts, they will manage to pursue their ideological ambitions, at least to some extent. They are obsessed with the idea of living on this planet forever, perhaps because they do not believe in what comes after, in the Hereafter, and seem to attribute absolute value to earthly possessions. They love them so much that they go as far as polluting and destroying them through wars, even resorting to slander to defend them. Because if everyone shared the same purpose, what room would be left for their domination? Do you remember all those films about wars fought for power? That very same war is happening now, but instead of swords, they poison us through our food and take our land away from us.

They have corrupted rivers and mountains too, occupied the skies and now they are plucking the stars from the sky, so that children may no longer be told that “we will return to the heavens”, because one day that sky may no longer be visible.

Then again, we could also say: “We have returned to the heavens”, and the paradigm would change.

Despite everything, the road that once led somewhere had by then become covered with little golden leaves, shaped like tiny stars. They carpeted the concrete and were trampled underfoot by everyone, with hardly anyone noticing their presence. And yet, it was impossible not to breathe in their message.

It was then that the sky itself seemed to turn upside down, with people barefoot and standing on their heads. An unusual perspective, perhaps, but not necessarily a wrong one.

Why have so few noticed that we are walking in a different direction? Why is it that only some can sense that the scent of the leaves has become more intense and delicate than usual? And why does their essence, instead of spreading upwards, seem to descend, almost as though it were trying to reach precisely those who have not yet learned to stop? The same person once told me that it is simply a matter of sensitivity. A simple word, and yet one capable of containing entire universes.

And it is precisely this sensitivity that deserves to be saved. Not its opposite, nor some corrected, domesticated version of it, made easier to understand. This fragrance is not an illness to be cured, nor an oddity to be brought into line with some common standard.

Artificial intelligence would probably suggest replacing all of this with a single word: “normalise”. But what would happen if, one day, every leaf had to have the same shape, every letter had to follow the same composition, and every thought had to fit within a predetermined standard?

Perhaps the world would become more orderly, but would it still be capable of surprising us?

This is the paradox of an age in which so much is said about freedom, while everything that deviates from the norm is constantly being corrected. Yet difference must be allowed to remain there, on the road, like those little leaves that nobody gathers, and which nevertheless continue to tell their story, one day reclaiming the narrative itself.

If the immense forces around us are pulling us towards them, how will we manage to remain anchored to the ground? They invoke science to deny God, yet sooner or later they end up facing the very same question: if everything has a cause, what is the primary cause? Personally, I love science, because in the end it seems to return, stubbornly, to the same point, and it cannot go any further without questioning the common denominator. The same applies to philosophy. Of all disciplines, logic is the one I favour most.

But while shoes are flying through the air, soon clothing too will be carried away by the wind. In the meantime, I continue to observe nature, those star-shaped leaves that should remind us that Nature is One of a Kind.

And so a question comes naturally to mind:

Are you sure something hasn't turned upside down?

In the Qur'an, Surah 81, At-Takwir (The Folding Up), verses 1–3, we read:

“When the sun is folded up, and the stars lose their light, and the mountains are set in motion.”

And again, in Surah 99, Az-Zalzalah (The Earthquake), verses 1–2:

“When the Earth is shaken with its mighty shaking, and brings forth its burdens.”

And in Surah 101, Al-Qari'ah (The Striking Calamity), the Day is described when everything will be thrown into turmoil and human beings will appear scattered like moths.

It is not so much that we should interpret the end of times through what we see, but rather that we should recognise what we have forgotten to look at: beyond the innocent little leaves scattered across the pavements, the fragile clouds, the words of the wind, the lush green of the hills and, above all, the fragrances that Nature itself gives off.

Every scent, in truth, communicates. At school, we are taught that communication is governed by a set of theories and that it is impossible not to communicate. And yet, those who teach these things are often the very first to trample upon the golden carpets of autumn, dismissing them with a casual “they're only dead leaves anyway”. But perhaps the ones who are truly dead are those who strip symbols of their meaning, reducing them to mere interpretations and even forgetting that theories are born from the reality we seek to understand.

But if reality is interpreted in a distorted way, or if our own minds construct a representation of it according to their own patterns of understanding, on what grounds can we be certain that our interpretation is the only correct one? And, above all, with what presumption can we claim that we alone are right?

If we take two separate elements and add them together, the result will not necessarily allow us to understand what emerges from their union.

In other words, the whole may hold a meaning that its individual parts, taken separately, cannot explain.

And above all, if we maintain that the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts, should we not apply that same principle to our own theories?

The question is fundamental because, if the majority of human beings interpret reality in a similar way, theory can become a cage just as easily as it can become a swallow. And perhaps this is why, while everyone is trying to conquer the sky, a definition has ended up being assigned to the wrong side.

In any case, the journey continues, even beyond ready-made phrases: the leaves become fallen letters, slowly gathered and pieced back together. And from this intertwining, new words, new harmonies and, soon, music never heard before will be born.

Perhaps one day the education system, too, will realise that it should never have expected all trees to grow in the same direction, nor deprived them of their most original branches. Not everyone can be confined within limited and inconsistent definitions, nor does everyone grow according to the same patterns. There are trees that challenge the wind, not to resist it, but to learn to dance with it, because balance is formed through contrasts.

And I leave you with a reflection: who decides what is true and what is false, when, along the very same autumn path, Nature continues to show us a thousand colours, a thousand shapes and a thousand different essences?

Surah 10 – Yunus, Verse 47

“Every community has a messenger. When their messenger comes, all matters are judged with fairness, and no one is wronged.”

Surah 49 – Al-Hujurat, Verse 13

“O mankind! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may come to know one another. Surely, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.”

And what if true enlightenment were born precisely there, in that silent space where certainties cease to cast shadows and the gaze learns once again how to rest upon the world? For it is not enough to encounter the light if one cannot recognise it, even when it comes from elsewhere, through words or along paths one would never have chosen. Light arrives from where it is least expected, and it is the kind of light that never asks whom it belongs to before allowing itself to shine...