The Moment of Monumental Metamorphosis !!!

{This is my maiden attempt at fiction. I have styled it like The Enlightenment of Buddha albeit in a more radical & iconoclast manner. Needless to say this is not original but heavily inspired by various things foremost among which are German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche’s works. Don’t sue me for plagiarism!   )

{  Introducing this, would in a way not be appropriate. But suffice it to say that this is a first-person narrative of a man who’s suffered a lot and deep into contemplation comes across thoughts that………………………………… }

Disclaimer: This work is a fictional account of a true story. 

It was the dead of night with only an eerie silence and black sky accompanying me.  Was I laughing? Yes, laughing as though that were the only substitute for bursting into tears.  I perhaps knew why is it that man alone laughs!! He alone suffers so much pain that he was compelled to invent laughter.

I was waiting………….waiting for nothing… “What went wrong? Where did it go wrong? Why only me?”. Such questions were being thrust upon my weak mind which knew no answers. Was my life only a chronology of unfulfilled promise, a dismal failure and was life eventually as lonely as this?

All it knew was that certain decisions went wrong. Miserably wrong at that. Was I responsible for it? I don’t know!

The optimistic wave that breezed throughout my early life has at last given way to hurricane which blinded vision! It appeared as though hope at last has been defeated by fate! My ego and pride lay there, shattered, humiliated and prostrate.

I had hopes initially. But the hopeful help never arrived to rescue my shipwreck and it was only now I was seeing the inevitability of my failure, so meticulously planned to seal my fate.

And hope? Hahaha! That quintessential human delusion! Nature traps humanity into an existence of misery through hope as a bait. It is infact the most evil thing perhaps, as it prolongs the agony of man! If not for hope, men would have happily thrown their lives, but nature had decided to rule living beings, not the dead.

They say love heals all. But what is love, but a desire for possession! Courtship is combat and mating the mastery!!! People are often under the illusion that in love they are selfless because they seek the advantage of another person often in conflict with their own. But for doing so, they desire to possess the other being.

It started raining. I wasn’t sure if my cheeks were wet because of rain or was I crying?

When the world around me was overenjoyed with their newfound successes, I a warrior of fame lay in the battlefield exhausted and defeated.  I fought hard, but in the end it didn’t matter…..my claws were torn and my spirit fatigued…..my head bloody….but UNBOWED as yet.

What have I done to receive so severe a punishment? I felt betrayed & lonely. Why were fate and people so mean & cruel?

What was the meaning of all this? Certainly being one among the millions on earth, was I  special enough to deserve this treatment? Or was I?

I heard some cries for help somewhere! Was I imagining something? No. It was real enough. I looked around. I saw blurring images of an owl attacking some crows and slaughtering them mercilessly knowing well that they can’t escape from the encompassing darkness.

Suddenly, beyond the randomness of events, coincidences, plans etc was almost an imperceptible coherence, relatedness, uniformity. The illusion of diversity was slowly blurring out. I saw an order & method & unity in the ways of nature!

From the depths of despair rose a perspective of a hundred lives, a vision from the pangs of human bondage giving birth to a new realization.

Was the owl being evil? The owl would have looked at crow and thought “killing crow is good”, and the crow might have thought “killing me is evil”. There is nothing good or evil by universal definition. There is no altruism among men!

It appeared to me that there was a common denominator of all human activities, an underlying principle, the secret behind all human existence. It was at this moment that my entire philosophy fell in place.

I felt that the widespread misery doesn’t find expression in the desire to live and let live, but in a deep-rooted intoxication for domination, a desire to overpower, the WILL TO POWER.

I saw in love, a desire to possess. In friendship I saw the desire to secure one’s ambitions, in courteous manners, an attempt to veil to vile nature of men, I saw in traditions the desire to dominate others, in laws the justification of suppression!

I realized what profound thinkers of all ages would have known but disguised it for obvious reasons! 

IN THE BATTLE THAT WE CALL LIFE, what we need is not goodness but strength, not humility but pride, not altruism but resolute intelligence!

The present ideas of morality are against the nature’s law of “survival of the fittest”. The final arbiter of all differences and destinies is not justice but POWER.

Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be an ocean to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

A warrior must thus imitate both fox and lion.  For the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. 

Without the slightest dishonest intention, men forget their mistakes while magnifying the errors of others. It is not out of morality or immorality but simply a consequence of this will to power. We seek to grow, to be empowered and thus manipulation is the very core of man. It is after all the will to live which by itself is the result of the will to power. Didn’t Godfather famously state “It's nothing personal, just business!”

Stripped of all moral acid, all vanities, and all pleasantries my soul lay naked from the clothing of prejudice and was for the first time responsive to the destiny of all men.

Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it. We can't run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us.

From the ruins of coils of failure, arose the eagle! Far above all human affairs and observing all from mountain-tops dispassionately! It is rather fearless than good. Unmoved of all sentiments, traditions, conventions but nonetheless using them all to its profit.!!

I looked into the skies, and behold!!!! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the eagle’s neck. Was I imagining?  !!!

Out of life's university of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!