i’m reminded of these stories.  two heroes from a time long long past.  perhaps it’s because 300 opens this weekend and the old greek stories are still fascinating and relevant today.  perhaps because there are so few good words that start with “o” in my native language (that do not either have the prefix “over-”  or that are “orgasm”).  but mostly i think that it is because they are heroes, and for whatever reason, i need heroes in my mind by which to compare myself (a fact that i will try and work out in upcoming sessions of therapy).

odysseus is of course the hero of the odyssey.  the wisest and most clever of the greeks of homer, he devised the strategy of the trojan horse that turned the fate of an entire war, and his epic adventure was the archetype of all great journeys and adventures for thousands of years.  this year’s pre-occupation with discovery and personal exploration must certainly take into account the influence of this formative figure for me.

odysseus would not have had half of the success or glory that he enjoyed had it not been for the intervention of critical female influences in his life.  pallas athene was continually watching over him, making his hair curlier, his armour shinier, and his spear sharper than anyone else around him.  his devoted wife, penelope, to whom he continually sought to return for decades during the trojan war and his journey home (except when he was otherwise engaged by other women with whom he was “compelled” to divert himself) was another legendary figure that gave his character some kind of grounding (as flimsy as it seems in today’s ADD perspective).  calypso, with whom he spends seven years forgetful of who and what he is… so very many lessons to be learned.  as i find myself on my own “epic journey” of a sorts away from my kingdom and the place of my birth, i wonder at the way in which we all venture forth into the unknown to seek our way back to ourselves.  perhaps this is the meaning and the essence of life – to travel outside of ourselves in order to learn who we really are.

another greek fella who had problems with women was orpheus.  an artsy fellow even by thracian standards, he was a musician who dearly loved his wife, eurydice, and with a cool name like that, who wouldn’t!?  orpheus pined and pined and wallowed in melancholy for… well, for a LONG time so as to bum out even the gods of mount olympus.  the gods agreed to allow him passage to the underworld to rescue his lost love, but his excitement, his selfishness, and his doubt perhaps fueled by his preoccupation with his own suffering, caused him to break the solemn promise that enabled his journey, and he damned his love and himself to their inevitable fates.  in spite of his unique and heroic efforts, he vanquished himself in his sole mission – to rescue his love from perdition.

i absolutely love the classics! time and time again, they prove to me as i hope that they prove to everyone that the old stories are still the best.  they survive and retain their relevance because they are timeless lessons that never lose their value or meaning, even though our world is so very very VERY different than the worlds in which they were conceived.  they are the essential distillation of human experience – the grand champions over the test of time.  every reading of these texts, even every glance at their wisdom, sheds new light on the human condition and on the reader’s own world.  their impact has been incalculable, even as generations and generations have stumbled into exactly the same kind of mistakes as the heroes that they describe.

i’ve been moaning a lot lately because i’ve lost something that is precious to me.  i’ve heard myself say that every moment in one’s life is disconnected from each preceding one by free will. each moment that we live, we choose to go forward with some plan or expectation that we might have for our present and future, and every single moment, we are confronted with an infinite number of alternative ways of being.  our choice to remain in the throes of inertia, or to try and break free of the gravitational pull of our own personalities and histories is a personal one, and one that can be revisited every single second of our lives.

for myself, and as little as it might be apparent to those with whom i have history, i am continually seeking  to find a better way to be, but i am as trapped as anyone by the source of my identity and my longing to remain the individual who i want to be… and so i seem to have revolved like the earth around the sun, speeding along at a ridiculous pace, but never escaping the predetermined path of my journey.  it’s a maddening realization to think that i’ve travelled so far and achieved so much and have won so many challenges and passed so much time, but achieved so little change in so long a time – wondering all the while what difference any of this struggle has made (other than to my two cats, who seem increasingly aware of my importance as they get older and needier!).

i have lost something very very precious to me.  i don’t know if i will ever be able to get it back.  every moment, i ask myself that question.  i am getting to the point where i can embark on the next part of my journey, hopefully a little wiser and a little better to face the next set of challenges.  this last challenge will remain unique in my experience though – because i will always be looking behind my shoulder for this part of me that i somehow let fall away from me (because that worked so well for orpheus!).

read more books.  the paper kind.

- g