Bodies!

The other day, we visited the Bodies Exhibit down in Cleveland as a biology field trip.

Fetusfetusfetusfetus.

It was extremely interesting to see real body parts (although plasticized, they looked very real)
The most interesting, and possibly the most controversial, part of the whole exhibit was the fetal development room. It showed the week-by-week life of a growing being from the beginning. There was a sign warning against faint-hearted people, and a constant heartbeat could be heard in the entire wing.

I don't know what about the exhibit made it so eerie and unreal. Possibly just to have little (what was potential) lives sitting in front of you to get as close as you want (without touching of course) gave the whole experience such a surreal quality. It's one thing to read about how things work in a textbook, and a whole other situation when you see it in real life. The tangibility of something always has a much bigger impact on the mind and one's emotions than anything else.

It's similar to reading about death. If you watched someone die the way it is described in books, that circumstance will impact your life much more forcefully than anything you could watch on tv or read in a novel.