The world is cruel, yet it is still so beautiful

“The world is cruel, yet it is still so beautiful.”

-Akuma no Ko by Ai Higuchi from ‘Attack on Titans’.

An ode to the song, the anime which I have dearly loved.

 

The world has deemed snakes as cruel creatures for a long time. After all, they leave death in their wake, they were one of the natures deadliest creatures. For decades, the snakes were feared and worshipped. At one point, the fact that such vicious creatures could even exhibit maternal instincts towards their eggs and young ones was widely debated, but the truth was that snakes cared, even up to the point of forsaking their foods, rather than forsaking their eggs. Vipers and pythons were known to forsake food for over months, they would rather prefer to curl up tightly around their eggs and provide them warmth. The mothers often do not leave their eggs, causing their body to deteriorate due to lack of nourishment. 

Snakes are fierce protectors, yet cunning and deadliest of hunters.

Snakes maybe cruel, but still, they are beautiful.

Intricate patterns adorning their skin, striking colours, glittering scales, glinting eyes.

The world is cruel, yet it is still so beautiful.

World is cruel, mindlessly cruel to the ones who lived on this planet. Horrific crimes like rape, murder, sodomy, human trafficking, slavery, etc. breached every possible limit of inhumanity.

Horrific crimes, horrendous diseases, harrowing problems made a life.

You wonder what is the point of life after all?

The world tries to make life as painful as it can. The world is hell-bent on destroying innocence. Was it even possible to protect someone’s innocence in this cruel world? No matter how hard you try, the world will destroy you, the world will bring your walls down, it is the down payment for existence. Only a very few manage to preserve some shreds of innocence, but eventually time takes that away too.

Life isn’t poetry, it is prose. Long, hard and difficult to read. Life didn’t rhyme, nor is it gay, it is filled with confusing words, sentences which caught at your tongue.

Suffering gives life meaning it is said, but is it really meaningful when it aches everywhere?  Pain is hard, and maybe we romanticise it, we do it just to make it bearable. But in quiet moments we often ponder over that fact that some of our suffering really seems so meaningless.

We convince ourselves that out of pain, beautiful moments are born.

We look ahead, for a glimmer of hope, which makes us run, just a bit more.

The more painful the story is, the more moving and more motivating it is.

Easy was never inspiring. It didn’t test limits of human existence; it didn’t have the awe-inspiring feature of pain.

The more you live in the world, you can only see more of despair. It slowly chips away at your childhood innocence and makes you an adult.

But yet the fact was that the world was still so beautiful.

Just like there was poverty, there was despair, there was abundance, there was sun, there was fresh watermelon juice, there was rain, there was light.

There are tall mountains and deep valleys that offer views which leave us spell-bound. There are a billion galaxies in the solar system, intricately designed, intricately coloured that you marvel at its beauty. How could something be created in such a beautiful fashion?  

The beauty gives us reasons to not suffer so meaninglessly.  

World seems to make sense only for these small moments, small moments where you find happiness, where you laugh, where you giggle and stay awake with excitement. In those moments every drop of pain seems worth it. In fact, in those moments, you don’t even think about pain.

However, the world seems to snatch that away too sometimes. Sometimes, when you find little moments of happiness, you are afraid to enjoy them, you wonder when the next sad moment shall strike. You want to preserve the little happiness, afraid that if you open your fist, it shall escape. You try so hard to hold on to it, you despair sadness so much, that the very thought of happiness leaving you causes sadness. You lament at the cruel world, its cruel ways, your cruel fate because you are unable to breathe, unable to live in the moment, unable to enjoy that moment.

The world is majestic, it is pure, it is unspoilt when it rains, when it washes away the sins of humans. It renews itself, adorns its new greens, spills tears, both happy and sad.

It weeps sadly for the troubles, and weeps happily that the days are now gone. A reprieve has come.

The world was beautiful only to those can see it. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder after all.

Alas the world hides its beauty well; you really have to seek it out. You have to try to seek it out every day. It is such a chore unlike its cruelty which is glaring and doesn’t take any effort.

Everybody is such a gossip monger, everyone likes to talk about its cruelty more than its beauty, if the world was somewhat like me, it must be sad. But I too am a hypocrite, because even I spoke badly about the world every day.

So, I looked to the skies, who were wishing and hoping, they were whispering that there is space, there is so much space for everyone, there is space for beauty too. So, I whispered back, that I would try to look at it more, look at how pretty it was, even though its black spots were more visible than its clear blue face.

I promised I would at the very least try to look for the world being beautiful, to look at humans who behaved beautifully, who cared, who were kind, who hoped despite it all, to the animals who loved despite it all.

The world was majestic, it was magnificent, it was beautiful.

And since no one could be perfect, it was cruel too.

The world proved that perfection did not exist.

Not in me, not in you, not in anything that the world bore.

The world was cruel, yet it was still so beautiful.

I hope rather than finding fault with it, I too can find its good qualities and just because I can’t see them, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Beauty always exists, without meaning, without reason, beyond the walls of the cynical mindset we have boxed ourselves in.

Maybe I am afraid to look. Afraid to look because it is hard to look for it. Hard to find, and even harder to convince myself of the apparent truth for the cynicism has poisoned the very core. I am just like the bird which wants to flap its wings and fly but is also afraid of plummeting to death.  The new possibilities absolutely frighten the bird which has stayed in the nest forever. New is scary, new is uncertain, but new is also beautiful. The bird which was excited to touch the skies was poisoned by the mother which told the baby of the horrors lurking in the world.

Nevertheless, the world had beautiful skies. It was an absolute truth. Even if the dangers were there. Fear which planted dangers obscured the beauty of the sky for the baby bird. But maybe if it squinted hard enough, it would see the light peeking out from behind the dark clouds.

However, when the bird left the nest, it saw for itself, the world, with all its cruelties, but then it was flying too and the flight among the clouds was beautiful. However, the distrust it had, wouldn’t let it enjoy the world. It was afraid of being subjected to the cruelties, too wrapped up in protecting itself that it forgot, to look at the fluffy clouds.

Because, the sky was beautiful. And it was an absolute truth.

The world was cruel, yet, it was still so beautiful.

And all of us have a duty towards the world, a duty that no matter where we are, and no matter what we do, we should believe and protect that precious part of ourselves which believes in the beauty of the world, because it can be easily lost and obscured, and one day, we shall wake up, and find ourselves believing only in the cruelty of the world and not its beauty. We might call it the day we became adults who couldn’t believe in childish dreams.

We try to simplify the world, we put it in boxes, decide on the most important things such as money.

Money was the most important thing in the world. Money ruled. People broke their backs for money, brothers at each other’s throats for money, children at their parents for money, people even loved for money.

Money killed but money also helped survive. Money saved too, it saved lives, brought happiness. Money did a lot of things.

Even love couldn’t do so much. Love couldn’t put food on the table, but money could.

We look for reasons, reasons convenient to us, but deep down we do know that we could have tried too, but we didn’t and if we had looked for reasons, the world would have given us beautiful reasons. Beautiful reasons hard to find.

Beauty was hard to find.

But it was there.

Just like love.

How long could you wait to find the good?

At one point, we would grow weary and stop looking.

It was the whole point of promise, of reminding ourselves, of our belief, that the tiny reasons inside of ourselves which believed in the world, its beauty and the power of hope, we had to protect those tiny and precious reasons which made us less cruel and more human.

--

 

Sooo, I had watched AoT in January of 2022, and it was a great way to start the year. Also, this thought loop had stuck with me for too long almost five months before it finally had a concrete base on my word document. It was joy to write it. 

Here is the song link of the title - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPl10ZrhCtk (don't forget to turn on captions!)

And that's it. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. Do share your thoughts in the comments below!

Have a nice day!