I’m very much in favor of first-hand experience in life, so much so that I don’t think second-hand experiences count. No matter how many pictures of the Mona Lisa you’ve seen, you haven’t really seen it unless you’ve been to the Louvre. Even there you are looking through bullet-proof glass, and possibly being prodded to move on so someone else can have a turn, and it’s disappointingly small, so maybe that’s not the best example. Go to the Gardner Museum and look at John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo. You may have seen a reproduction, but that will not matter. I love that painting, yet I gasped and stared when I saw it in person.

Watching the fireworks display or the baseball game on TV is also not the same as being there, though it’s a better proxy if you have in the past attended a fireworks display or a baseball game in person, because you may be able to evoke the associated sounds, smells, and tactile sensations. If you haven’t been in a long time, though, your brain has probably toyed with those memories.

Not that I think we shouldn’t look at art in books or watch celebratory TV events. I just think we can’t afterward say, I was there, or I’ve seen that. It’s not a checkoff for your bucket list, in other words. Unless you have Experience a proxy of reality on your list.

I notice a lot of people experiencing reality through the phone camera, and I’m starting to wonder if that even counts. At Monterey Bay Aquarium, for instance, it often seems like everyone standing between me and the sea nettles or penguins is taking a snapshot or a video, often with nary a glance. Then most stand there poking the phone for a little longer to send or store or whatever you do next to the captured image, before moving on.

I spend a lot of time waiting for people to finish doing this.

If you’ve only seen the Grand Canyon through a lens, have you really seen it?

If someone wanted to be really snarky, that person, who isn’t me, might observe that a lot of what we do isn’t real-real, even if it’s real. Seeing a captive octopus at MBA is better than seeing a picture of an octopus, but it isn’t as real as seeing a wild one while diving, at least not if you are interested in what an unfettered octopus might do.

Your presence might also influence the behavior of the wild octopus, so maybe it is not possible to truly observe the reality of an octopus.

I guess I’m glad I experienced living through many, so many, long, cold winters in New England. I notice that people who have never done that really don’t seem to understand it, and no amount of explaining helps. I remember day after day of feeling like I had been hit in the face by a plank as soon as I exited my house, so I can be sympathetic, and understanding, and genuinely grateful, when I see winter on the Weather Channel.

My husband and I are heading to New Jersey in March, hoping for an early spring.