There are some days when the world feels ordinary, yet something quiet and meaningful hides always inside the ordinary scenes. Today, such a moment came to me in my own village, not through people, but through two simple village dogs.

     The air was cool, the sky soft, and the village road. It was not even a proper road — just a narrow village footpath covered with fallen branches and dry autumn leaves.

     Empty except for these two dogs sitting close together. One was black, calm and confident-looking, with a bone — real, heavy, earned — between his paws. The smell of it filled the air as he chewed slowly, confidently, without hurry, as if everything in life made sense.

     The other one was brown, and between his legs he held a hard white piece of thermocol — not food, not useful, not nourishing.
It did not carry smell.
It did not carry taste.
It was nothing.
     But he chewed it with pride, acting as if he too had something valuable. He had copied not only the act — he had copied the dignity. And this imitation gave him a strange joy, the joy of feeling equal without actually being equal.

     For a moment, nothing seemed strange. Each was busy with his own little world. I walked past them, thinking nothing more than “strange dogs.” But a few steps ahead something pulled me back. A tug from inside — the kind of tug that whispers:
“Look again. There is a truth hiding here.”

So I stopped.
So I turned.
I turned back.

I took out my phone and started recording. ( video )  The moment the camera pointed at them, the illusion cracked.

His pride evaporated.
The brown dog stopped immediately.
His eyes widened — not from fear, but from an uncomfortable awareness, as if he suddenly realised that he was pretending, and now someone had seen it.

It was like a mask falling off.
He no longer chewed the thermocol.
He didn’t even look at it.
He simply froze, exposed.

    But the black dog continued chewing his bone. His world did not collapse because it was real. He didn’t care about the camera or the human standing there. This pause came only later, when he sensed my presence. Even then, he paused not with shame, but with a calm curiosity — as if saying,
“Yes? What is it that you want?”

Not shame.
Not fear.
Only awareness.

That tiny difference — between freezing in guilt and pausing in confidence — carried a whole philosophy inside it.

     This small scene with two dogs strangely reflected something deeper about human beings.

The brown dog reminded me of how often we try to imitate others: how we copy lifestyles, words, beliefs, and appearances, not because they are ours, but because we want to feel equal, accepted, or seen. The thermocol he chewed was not food. But it was a symbol — a symbol of pretending to have what others have. And the moment he felt a gaze upon him — the gaze of judgment, of being seen — the illusion fell apart.

Many people live like this. They build identities out of things that cannot feed their soul. They hold on to thermocol pieces believing they are bones — dreams copied from others, desires borrowed from society, achievements that have no meaning inside.

    The black dog, on the other hand, symbolised something else — something Nietzsche often spoke about: the human who knows what is his, who does not pretend, who lives from his own truth. Nietzsche called this the authentic man or the one who is moving toward becoming an Übermensch — not a superior human in strength, but one who creates his own meaning, his own values, and stands by them without fear.

    The black dog did not stop because he was caught. He stopped only because something new entered his world — me. But he did not hide, he did not act guilty, he did not bend. His truth remained his truth.

    The brown dog’s fear was not fear of me. It was the fear of seeing himself clearly. Some people call this the anxiety of self-recognition — the moment you realise you are not living your own life, but imitating someone else’s.

    The black dog, meanwhile, lived fully in his own reality. His existence was simple, but honest. He was not pretending to be anything.

    The village road was still, the morning quiet, but inside me something shifted. It reminded me that most of us are afraid of being seen not because people are harsh, but because we fear that our own illusions will be exposed.

    The brown dog, poor fellow, simply picked up a piece of thermocol. But he unknowingly acted out a deep human truth — the truth of living a borrowed life.

    The black dog showed the opposite truth — that peace comes from being rooted in one’s own reality.

Nietzsche would say:
“Become who you truly are.”
Not who you are told to be.
Not who you imitate.
Not who you pretend to be when others watch.

And The Darvesh say:
“Know who you are.”

     These two are not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin. To know yourself is to see clearly whether you are holding a bone or a thermocol. To become yourself is to choose the bone — even if it requires effort, even if it comes with struggle, even if it means letting go of imitation.

     The world is full of thermocol bones — things that look meaningful but do nothing for the soul. The danger is not in holding them. The danger is in convincing ourselves that they are real.

So, 

“Choose the bone of truth, even if it is small.
Reject the thermocol of imitation, even if it looks impressive.
Do not freeze when the gaze appears.
Live a life that can survive being seen.”

The author is a Gold medalist in Environmental Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).