The Steppenwolf

It’s a full moon outside tonight. There are very few things in this world that are as beautiful as a full moon on a silent night. You look up to see the moon partly covered by the clouds, that try their very best to overshadow the radiance of it. Someone should tell them that when the moon shines with all its might, it overpowers the darkness of even the looming clouds, with its pristine white light. Then the very same clouds can’t help but appear soft and milky at the behest of the mighty moon. Such is the beauty of the moon that even the threatening clouds can’t help but add to the beauty of it.

But sadly these are the days of darkness! Tonight is a night when a Steppenwolf looks up at the moon and howls out of sadness. This Steppenwolf calls out for the one he loves and howls with all his might so that perhaps somewhere far far away the she-wolf will hear his cries and answer back. It is the same moon, adding the same beauty to the night, which makes the wolf lonesome tonight.

For the longest time I used to think that death is the most painful thing in human life. Because death has the ultimate power of swiftly swooping down like an eagle attacking its prey, to suddenly grab the poor soul, only to swoosh away with the powerful flap of its wings. I certainly haven’t died and I certainly would be last person to speak intelligently about the nuances of something as mighty as death.

But tonight, looking at the Steppenwolf, I feel that death perhaps is only a new beginning, which settles silently on some of us while makes the most of others. Eventually though its peace that settles upon the one in grasp of death. Come to think of it there’s something infinitesimally worse than death. It is the ability of life to give the power of sight to a blind person and then take it back from them. Ah, those colors of life! Full of life and vigor; meaning and exuberance; beauty and radiance- to give it to someone, who has accepted darkness as a way of life, and to then take it back- that my friends is the most cruel of it all. Metaphorically speaking, when you don’t have a heart you don’t know how or where it beats. Neither do you know how much it aches inside your chest. Then one fine day you feel the steady and rhythmic thump inside. Sure, it’s nice to feel life in place of the numb deadness, but it definitely isn’t nice to bear the ache that sooner or later comes with it. When the grief inside becomes so damn much that you feel like tearing your heart out. When the same life loses the feel and appearance and exuberance of the same bright colors, and it becomes nothing more than a bland black and white painting; because there frankly is no meaning to life without that which gives colors to it.

It is then that the Steppenwolf cries out of pain, and howls for what he has lost and what he desperately seeks. Believe you me, his pain is far greater than the pain of death. During the day, you might look at the façade and think that there barely is anything wrong. But the fact remains that the pain never dies…. And that it hurts the most when it’s beautiful outside. Because the wolf knows that there is no end to these moonlit nights and there is no end to the pain within, and there certainly is no inner peace.

The irony of life and the truth of the matter is that there always is this hard and callous ugliness on the other side of beauty. They are both juxtaposed in such a way that the former follows the latter like the links in a chain. C’est la vie, huh?

I still stand in the same corner looking out for those eyes that suddenly looked at me. All I can see is the loneliness mirrored on a beautiful moonlit night.