Reflection and reality

I once read about an exhibit where you were asked to look into a box. The inside was completely black. There was nothing to see or any way to judge the size or depth of the interior. It could have been a foot deep or as wide as a light year. Then you were asked to move a lever at the top of the box. The lever lowered a chrome wand into the blackness. The wand was brilliantly lit. It turns out the box was not empty at all. On the contrary, it was filled with an intense light.
The physics is so strange, I mean, who really knows what a photon is? And how can it be what it is? A Messenger of reflection.
The exhibit demonstrated the irony of our visual reality. What it shows us is that we have no concrete visual understanding of the universe. All that we see...is reflection.
How can we say anything we see is true? If you plunge a stick into a pool of water, you can see it bend. But physically, it is not bent at all. What you see is the reflection of the stick in refracted light. We all know the stick did not physically change shape.
So how does this idea affect our perception of beauty? If what we see may or may not be real, how do we know what is beautiful?
Beauty is the supreme mystery...But it is always true. Its being is not just a reflection of image, but a reflection of mind. Beauty is always something you feel as well as see. How we know it is the mystery.