I had a similar ‘epiphany’ a year ago, so I know exactly what you mean. In my case, I thought of it as sun or any light source, and in terms of the electromagnetic waves. We are in this ocean of electromagnetic waves and with a little bit of effort (like flipping one’s perspective in a optical illusion image) I can reinterpret everything I see as ‘just’ spherically symmetric waves emitting from sources that are caught and trapped by molecules in my eye (and then interpreted by my brain as others are pointing out in the comments so far).
To elaborate, what was most interesting about the perspective was that I realized that while I wasn’t directly interacting with the objects, we were causally entangled (and thus interacting indirectly) via these electromagnetic waves. The perspective paid rent, in some sense, in that now I had a much better understanding of light scattering in general (and different kinds of mirages specifically) and I found it amazing that this kind of interference doesn’t happen more often. We are literally in a bath of these EM waves (the ones that I can see) and they are just bouncing around until they hit something. The thing that they hit—all the things that I see—catches them and destroys them (collapses the wave), so that what I actually see is a new EM wave that the thing emits a moment later.
I had a similar ‘epiphany’ a year ago, so I know exactly what you mean. In my case, I thought of it as sun or any light source, and in terms of the electromagnetic waves. We are in this ocean of electromagnetic waves and with a little bit of effort (like flipping one’s perspective in a optical illusion image) I can reinterpret everything I see as ‘just’ spherically symmetric waves emitting from sources that are caught and trapped by molecules in my eye (and then interpreted by my brain as others are pointing out in the comments so far).
To elaborate, what was most interesting about the perspective was that I realized that while I wasn’t directly interacting with the objects, we were causally entangled (and thus interacting indirectly) via these electromagnetic waves. The perspective paid rent, in some sense, in that now I had a much better understanding of light scattering in general (and different kinds of mirages specifically) and I found it amazing that this kind of interference doesn’t happen more often. We are literally in a bath of these EM waves (the ones that I can see) and they are just bouncing around until they hit something. The thing that they hit—all the things that I see—catches them and destroys them (collapses the wave), so that what I actually see is a new EM wave that the thing emits a moment later.