They say there is a great paradox: what is portrayed in a work of art, for example, in a novel, especially in a realist novel, is often more rational and makes more sense than the reality in which we live. In everyday life, events often happen without any warning, in many cases without any apparent reason or clear purpose. Chaos and chance are far more common than we tend to believe. A realist novel, on the other hand, although it tries to imitate life, follows an almost rigorous logic.

In epic narratives, every action has a motive, every character has an arc of development, and almost every event is connected through a clear cause-and-effect relationship. The author selects the details, removing the excess "noise" of everyday life in order to build something coherent. Perhaps this is why fiction comforts us: it offers a world where justice, tragedy, and fate have an inner logic, a logic that real life often lacks.

This leads us to an even deeper question, one that concerns life as a whole. When we claim to be speaking about reality, are we really talking about the world as it is, or about our perception of it? Aren't we, by nature, merely reflecting reality through a mirror colored by our beliefs, prejudices, and fears?

Perhaps the human brain is, by its very nature, a machine that searches for and creates meaning. If that is the case, then we are unable to accept pure chaos, and so we are inclined to impose a rational flow on the things that surround us.

Here another question arises: do we truly live in the reality of the things we analyze with logic and assign meaning to, or in an operetta that we "cook up" inside our own minds? The answer probably leans toward the latter. We seem to be the directors of an ongoing drama, or comedy, in which we assign importance and rationality to ordinary events. If this is true, then it follows that, to some extent, we are all Don Quixotes.

Just as Cervantes' famous knight saw giants instead of windmills and princesses instead of peasant girls, do we also transform the windmills of our everyday lives? I cannot say with absolute certainty that, most of the time, we fight and either win or lose imaginary battles, create enemies who do not exist, and project grand scenarios onto a reality that is often banal and indifferent to us.

But the doubt remains...