We all love to take pictures, especially when we travel. On
a recent trip to Ladakh, I took over a thousand pictures. My camera was always
with me and I was always looking for opportunities to take memorable shots. Given
the beauty of the place, my shutter was constantly clicking and electronic
images we piling on fast and furious in my 16 GB card.
However, at some points in my furious picture taking
episodes, I wondered---
“What would it be like
to enjoy a vacation without a camera?”
Of course, there are some simple responses to this question.
I will spend more time enjoying the beauty of the place and
people without the constant tension of making sure I appropriately capture the
moment. I will see the scene through my eyes and not through the viewfinder. I
will consign the beauty of the moment to my brain instead of some lousy
electrons.
On the negative side, I will have no record of the trip.
There will be no re-living of the experience later in life. The brain, already
fading, will be incapable of producing the images of what we saw. Worst of all,
I will not be able to share all these pictures and get envy-tinged accolades
from friends and family.
All that is fine but I suspect that there is a deeper
connection between picture taking and experiencing an event. This is supported by the fact that I get a
nagging feeling that the event is not over until the pictures are processed and
shared.
This reminds me of the Zen koan, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it
make sound?” Along those lines, I would raise a question, “if I do not have any evidence of the trip,
did I really experience it?”
Before you shout, “Of course you did,” let us see what philosophers
say about the tree falling question (borrowed from Yahoo answers by an
anonymous expert).
“Philosophers have said that what we really mean when we say
there would be a sound is that, if a person were there, they would hear a
sound. When you try to imagine the scenario of a tree falling in the woods with
no one there, and you imagine that there is a sound, you are actually imagining
being there yourself. You're imagining the tree falling from the viewpoint of
an observer, even though you're supposed to be imagining that there is no
observer.”
So, sound making by a tree requires an observer. The same
way, trip experience requires photographic evidence. No observer, no sound---no photos, no trip ;-)
