Redirected Reality Humans Are Optional!

I was walking my dog the other day when a quiet moment arrested me. He hopped up onto a chair on the balcony, propped his front paws on the armrests, and rested his lower body on the seat. He looked out toward the road, gazing into the distance. It was a scene of such goofy, tender innocence—the way he perched there, watching the world—that my first instinct was to capture it.

But I didn’t have my phone.

I stood there, paralyzed by a modern dilemma. If I ran inside to grab my camera, the spell would likely break; he would move, and the composition would be lost. I had two choices: take the risk to secure the digital proof and likely miss the reality, or simply stay and live the moment.

He looked so peaceful, framed against the backdrop, that I decided on the latter. I chose to witness my dog witnessing life.

Then, the doubt crept in.

Had I grabbed the phone, I would have secured a permanent artifact of my first dog. I could have looked back at it years from now, perhaps when I am old and grey, scrolling through a hard drive. But even then, I wonder: would a pixelated image truly carry the emotion I felt right then? Would it convey the vast, lush greens of the Pantnagar house, that sprawling estate where we lived briefly during my father’s work? Would the photo actually help me smell the gardens and feel the widespread greenery, or would it just be another file in a sea of thousands?

Because I failed to capture it, that moment is now destined to fade. We like to romanticize "living in the moment," but the reality is haunting. Because I didn’t freeze time, that specific feeling is gone forever. I felt peace in that fleeting second, yes, but I know I won’t remember exactly how it felt.

It is a strange realization: Life is essentially living, forgetting, and repeating.

This fragility makes me question what we consider a "meaningful life." We look at people who boast about their lives—those who deliberately curate beautiful moments or shout about their achievements to prove their existence mattered. They hold up titles and trophies, validated by society’s definition of success. They tell us, "Look what I did. Look how wonderful my life is."

But I suspect that isn’t true happiness. That is just pride—a fleeting high derived from external validation. They are working for a title, performing for an audience.

It makes me think of the others. The people who do good in the dark, when no one is watching. The ones who never get recognized but do the job anyway. We assume they are happy, that their altruism is pure. But I find myself skeptical even then. Is their "goodness" driven by an innate desire to give? Or is it a deeper, internalized conditioning—a hope that even without an audience, the universe is keeping score? Do they help others just to feel that their own lives are worth it?

It brings me back to the balcony. Whether we are capturing a photo of a dog or winning a prestigious title, we are all trying to prove something. We are trying to make the fleeting permanent. But in the end, whether we capture the photo or not, the moment passes. We are left only with the question: Are we good for the sake of being good, or are we just terrified of being forgotten?