The werewolf moment
This is an entry from my journal. It is about an experience that helped me become more practical, focused, and decisive.
There was a period in my life when I was more self-absorbed. I would live “in my head”, where I would entertain scenaria about my highly uncertain future. A large part of that activity was committed to troublesome matters, such as how to have relative financial stability in the wake of the economic crisis. I was concerned about my employment prospects and was wondering what kind of skills I would need to acquire to remain competitive and, thus, employable.
Money is not happiness, though living below the baseline means that many common activities are not available to you. You start feeling shame when for the Nth time you tell people “I cannot make it today, because REASONS”. It also has implications for your everyday mood, as you are persistently stressed about making ends meet and paying the next month’s rent. What adds to the self-doubt is the power dynamic between you and your landlord: the person who has the power to make you homeless, given your difficulties. A recurring nightmare I had back then was me escaping from some dogged pursuit with nothing but a backpack that contained a few clothes. Those were all my belongings and there was no place for me to call “home” as I was seeking a new hideout.
I realised I should not stay in a room until I could sort things out. Doing so would reinforce the tunnel vision. Instead, I committed to venture outside as much as possible. The pretext was to take pictures of as many scenes as I could, with the point-and-click camera I had purchased for this purpose. My trips took me to increasingly distant and unfamiliar places. I would leave my apartment in the morning and return at night, walking aimlessly in urban and rural settings. It is as if I was searching for something that could not be described, let alone named. I was lost, with no obvious way to improve my situation, while I kept overthinking the same themes to the point of exhaustion. In effect, I was a dead man walking.
In one of those excursions, I went off the beaten path into the nearby woods. I had the camera with me, which I used to take a few shots of fallen trees and wild vegetation before falling back into my now-habitual tormenting cycle of anxiety and self-loathing. The day passed by so quickly. It felt like I was there for only a few minutes, but it must have been closer to four hours. I had no good understanding of anything in my midst. Physically I was “there”, but mentally I had checked out.
It was sunset already and everything around me was getting darker. The place was extra quiet. Back then, I had no experience with the great outdoors. I could not recognise any of the plants around me, had no trusted people nearby, was ill equipped like a casual tourist, and did not know what I could be dealing with in such an unfamiliar territory. Alertness then came to me. I burst out of my little bubble, as if I had just woken up from a bad dream, and started paying attention to my surroundings. Everything felt poignant and proximate. I started noticing the humidity and the direction the wind was blowing. My breathing was deep and stable. I could hear the sound of my steps and immediately figured out the path that brought me to my current location.
At no point did I panic or sense fear. Instead, it was as if I had rediscovered a primal force that lay dormant inside of me; a force of immense potential that rendered me the dominant power in the forest. Rather than worry than I might fall pray to some predator or incur injury out of inexperience, I moved swiftly and steadily back whence I came. At all times I was fully aware of my environment and was determined to do what was necessary. In my head, I was the apex predator that even wolves would run away from.
The walk back home was unlike the others. It took me several hours and I remained vigilant throughout. Once I reached my apartment, probably past midnight, I prepared tea and sat at the table to reflect on what had transpired. I did not literally transform into some mythical beast, but I was clearly not the same person for a little while. Something special had happened that I was reluctant to admit yet was unable to deny. It is as if my entire being conspired to flip a switch that turned me from a pitiful introspective lost soul into an inexorable force of nature.
What I realised then and gradually embedded in my life as my new normal is the importance of situational awareness: living in the here-and-now of your immediate reality. Instead of playing out scenaria in my head, I remain focused on what is and work with what I have. By discerning the patterns in my vicinity and by examining their nuances, I am able to remain anchored in a world that is not a function of my innermost worries. My plans are thus clear and limited in scope.
I have lived through the unsettling side of introspection. The deeper you go in your own thoughts, the more likely it is you discover something of profound value, yet you also run the risk of incurring a great deal of suffering. You lose touch with the magnitudes around you and thus everything becomes a figment of your fears.
The Greeks have poetically captured this phenomenon in the archetype of Hades, the god of the “underworld” or, as I prefer to put it, the spiritual world. Hades rules over dead people, i.e. disembodied souls. The soul is separated from the body at the time of death. The corporal presence withers away, while the soul remains intact. Hades, then, is responsible for the cosmic order that holds separate the realms of embodied and disembodied beings. He is also known as “Plouton” (Πλούτων), with “ploutos” (πλούτος) being the Greek word for “wealth” (e.g. “plutocracy” is rule by wealth or rule by rich people). It is no coincidence that the god of spirits is also the god of wealth. Immaterial riches in this case. We do enrich ourselves by being “in our head”, in the sense that we gain insights that are otherwise not available to us, either whenever we reflect on our condition or think through certain issues. The spiritual person is a better version of themselves. Such is their greatest treasure. My daydreaming days were not bad in this regard, for I became wiser.
Hades enforces the separation of the worlds with no exception. Whenever a mortal goes too deep in their own thoughts, whenever they forget that they are not just a spirit, this god will remind them of their place. It is as if the god is telling us “you do not belong in my world, human, go back to the living”. If we do not heed the call, we will end up at the gates of Hades, where the mighty Kerveros (Cerberus) awaits. Artistically, this is when we are struck with suffering in the form of depression. It thus is no coincidence yet again how the stereotype of the embattled genius has come about. The deeply thoughtful person, the creative mind that is not satisfied with banalities, keeps moving closer to the boundary that Hades holds in place. Therein is the hard-to-acquire wealth of intellectual and spiritual refinement, yet there also lies suffering and death.
We are not made to befriend Hades. Not in this form of being, anyway. The greatest challenge thinkers face is to remain anchored in the world of the living, i.e. to have situational awareness, while still doing what their mind renders possible or even necessary. To me, the pursuit of intellectual matters is not a choice, but a precondition for calm. If I am forced to remain silent and to conform with whatever conventional truth, I will either explode in anger or implode in grief. What we occupy in the here-and-now is the world of deeds, of immediate challenges and struggles. It is the domain of Poseidon, as I explained in a recent entry in the “interpretations” section of my website: Interpretation of “Enchantress” by Protesilaos (2025-10-09).
Students of philosophy have these formulaic ways of going about things. To every statement they will ask “but what does X really mean and how can we truly know anything about it?”. This is how they drag you into a never-ending conversation that invariably pushes you a step closer to mental breakdown. “Really” and “truly” are the most dangerous words in a question. I am not a philosopher in this regard. I am content with the indeterminate, the nuanced, and the grey. Mine is the way of the animal: to go with the flow of my senses and to commit the deeds that follow from my intuitions. “Deeds” is the operative term. I work with a certain urgency, owning to the fact that I cannot afford to remain in a domain of theories: my body will rebel and punish me accordingly. Indeed, I pay attention to my entire being and do not consider any one facet of it to be superior to the others. This is what Hades demands.
Once you rekindle the wolf within, once you understand that being human necessarily entails being the apex predator of this planet, you no longer wish to be one of those students. Your calling is not of an academic sort. What you think is what you commit to, what you say is what happens. Thus, you do not talk big and save your words for when you have mustered the energy to reshape your milieu. To be a man of action, while retaining your intellectual capacity, is all about balance. Think things through, but learn to focus on a given project. The details of it do not need to be predetermined from beginning to end. Make sure you have a clear destination and that your means can take you to it. The rest follows organically.
There was no immediate change. It took me years to dismantle my old ways and establish new ones in their stead. I had no grand plan, no tutelary figure or trusted counterparty, no all-encompassing worldview with which to model my new life. What I knew was I would no longer tolerate the stress-inducing elements in my day-to-day affairs. Chief among them was the mismatch between responsibility and ownership that I had at work, namely, the fact that I would be held accountable for all sorts of duties that I had no say in and power over. Next was the tacit want for validation, in the form of doing a “decent” job. I would have none of that, tending to my wellness and vitality instead. Prestige is a poor substitute for inner peace. It also is an effective distraction from the deep-seated insecurity of not having gone off the beaten path and not having lived in earnest as the fully actualised version of oneself. I wanted only the latter and was poised to go where my powers would take me.
The other major change was to be forceful where necessary. Recent examples are fresh in my memory. Once I was doing a job interview in which I was asked “why are you passionate to join our company?”. This is a manipulation tactic to appeal to your inner “good boy” so they can unscrupulously exploit your sense of loyalty and friendship with impunity whenever they feel like it. It had happened to me before where this boss, pretending to be a friend, had asked me to work longer hours without remuneration. I agreed to it because “that is what friends are for” only to eventually get thrown under the bus. Either you have a superior or a friend. Not both. Not when the business has its own logic and you are replaceable. “Look, I am searching for a job and you are offering one; I am not here to marry you but to do business: I will not bring passion into it”. Such was my response and I then asked to conclude the interview.
Similar story for the prospective employer who emphasised how they care about “team culture” and how “we are mostly flat here”. This is all euphemistic talk to obfuscate the cut-throat outlook of putting the company goals above all, while maintaining a strict hierarchy that wields the simulacrum of friendship as a tool for control. I have no problem with an entrepreneur seeking profit. What I detest is the misplaced appeal to lofty goals and noble causes. Wherever I hear too much moralising, I know the place is steeped in vice.
The point is that I became more decisive in not accepting bullshit. For a while I tried not to speak and to play along. I was doing it in the hope of blending in, to eventually have a stable job and to finally not worry all the time about my precarious finances. Nonsense! What I got instead was the same old economic uncertainty, plus the cognitive burden of having to maintain appearances while facing patterns of behaviour I always considered dishonourable.
The “werewolf moment” marks a quantum leap in a transformation that has been unfolding over the years. It started with me seeking a change of scenery: to do whatever it takes to rekindle my vitality. I was trying to develop greater capacities and was putting myself out there. Little by little, I regained confidence in my abilities and soon rediscovered my potential for decisive action: to be a wolf among wolves. What followed is a broadening of these qualities. I have, in effect, been integrating the spiritual with the physical, the intellectual with the emotional, the accultured with the feral.
Since I mentioned Hades, I might as well make a brief comment on the symbolism of Apollon, the god of light (or enlightenment) and harmony. He carries the epithet “Lykeeos”/”Lykeios” (λύκειος), from where we get “lyceum” (λύκειο) and the name Lykourgos (Λυκούργος, i.e. “work of lykos”). Of course, “lykos” (λύκος) is the Greek word for “wolf”. We achieve enlightenment and reach inner peace when we allow the aforementioned integration to occur; when the primal and ever-wild beast within, poetically expressed as the wolf, becomes one with its accompanying mind; when we tend to all facets of our being. It is this union that emancipates us from self-destructive wants and their concomitant role-playing.
Tomorrow I will tend to my tasks on the computer and around the house. I shall do it with the same vigour and intensity that brought me here and made me who I am.