Being a moth is difficult. I do not wish to say being me is difficult, that's a given, but just being a member of my species makes life a hard one to live. We are hated creatures, though I can’t understand why. We are almost the same as our cousin the butterfly and yet, they are cherished and we are despised. Just because their wings are prettier than ours, just because their colors are brighter than ours. Is that all the criteria that needs to be fulfilled to be accepted, the color of my wings, the beauty of my body? But we don’t expect anything else from the oth
ers. We know, the way things work in this world and we've accepted being hated but we know it's not us who become inferior because of it. We who are judged based on prejudice, do not judge in return. We accept your verdict and we accept your ignorance. Even the change from a caterpillar to a cocoon to a moth isn’t as straightforward and easy as it sounds. Though, through this very transformation I receive from life the greatest gift that can be given. From trudging through the lowest depressions of the ground, I become capable of flight through the ecstasy of the sky. Ah, flying. Let me tell you, there cannot be a better feeling than flying. And ours is not the flight of the white winged dove that seems so divine to everyone else. No, our wings are frowned upon. The common opinion stands that we are despicable creatures, unworthy of something as revered as wings. Angels deserve wings, not moths. But I do not, and will not let myself be deterred into a feeling of shame for being who I am. These are my wings, and I will fly till they can support my hideous body. Your conclusions that my wings, my happiness are undeserved do not make a difference in my flight plan. My opinion of my life is more important than your opinion of my life. My wings are my happiness, my freedom and I will enjoy them without a hint of guilt.
In the last flight of my life, there was this kid, who wanted to go loafing in the darkness. It was a request I couldn’t understand. I found it strange; in fact anyone of us moths would have found it strange. We are uncannily attracted to bright glowing objects and darkness is the exact opposite of ‘bright glowing objects’.
'Why?' I asked him.
'Just look around.' he said.
Kids. We were moths, we didn’t just look around. 'We don’t have time to look around. We have to find a light to feed off.' I tried not to shout.
'What good will that do?' He was beginning to get annoying.
'What do you mean what good will that do? We are moths, that's our destiny.'
'But, we can just as easily dive into the darkness, no one's stopping us. It'll be an adventure.'
'Just follow me, and keep quiet.' The authority that comes with age is amazing. I don’t have to win an argument, at least not fairly, I just have to scold, raise my voice and he has to keep quiet. The strength of his argument is no match to the wisdom I am supposed to have gathered with my years. He sluggishly followed me to a bright fluorescent light on the fifth floor of some building. I landed right next to it. I could feel its reluctant heat, its blinding brightness. It was just what I was looking for, what any moth would be looking for. It was heaven, till he spoilt it. 'What now?' he asked. The most absurd of questions. Absurd because it was a question that didn’t deserve an answer, that didn’t have an answer. Why do men lust after success? Why do beggars beg? Why do cobblers cobble? It’s because they do it. Its what they were born to do. It is their destiny. And after they’ve achieved, what they set out to achieve, is it fair for them to question ‘what now’?
'What do you mean what now? We’ve got our light for tonight.' That should’ve be reason enough. It wasn’t. Not for him.
'That’s it?' he said. Maybe I should’ve shouted at him again.
'But that amounted to nothing. We just flew around, saw a bright shiny object and were drawn to it. Now we lie in its radiance with nothing to do. There was no purpose in that. How can our destiny be so meaningless?' He asked questions none of us would dare go near.
'What would you have achieved if you had gone away in the darkness? Just another story to tell? Will that have fulfilled your purpose? You do this or you do that, there isn’t a meaning behind anything, kid. The sooner you know that the better.'
'But, I would've been on a way I chose, a direction that wasn’t preset for me. I would've been able to make a mistake, experience freedom in its most brazen form. That has to count for something. How much longer do we have to keep continuing this futile exercise? A change will do every one of us good. A change...' he stopped short. One of you humans brought in your big fat fingers and sprayed us with one of your zillion insecticides. We fell. And with us fell our pride, the argument we just had, the authority of my age, the 34 successful flights that I managed, the dreams the kid had, our sense of freedom, all of it, everything, fell. All the experiences I achieved, all the perspectives I developed, all the respect I deserved, lay engraved in my frail body, shrunk into this tiny object that would in a few minutes be ant food. My life over in an instant. What purpose did it fulfill? What meaning did I unravel? What good did my destiny do to me? What benefits did I achieve from the way of the world, which I followed? Would I have had a different life had I listened to the kid, and taken up the offer for an adventure? No, it would’ve been a few laughs here, a few mistakes there but in the end, we would be lying as we were, just as insignificant as the last breath we breathed, just as hopeless as we were then. I, my life, may be forgotten or it may be remembered, I did not care. I was no longer an entity, no longer alive. Time stopped for me that day. The world came to an end.
"The dead look so terribly dead when they are dead."-W.Somerset.Maugham
