Your Own Personal Odyssey

I recently went to see Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey. It was my father’s birthday, he enjoys classical culture, and so we went to see it in a group.

*Spoiler Alert*

If you intend to watch the movie without knowing anything about The Odyssey, I suggest you wait until after you have watched it to read this article. Just to say, though, The Odyssey has been around for thousands of years: if you haven’t read it yet, it’s not because it has only recently become available!

There are so many deep and pertinent themes that come through in this story. It is truly a foundational myth for much of Western storytelling, and indeed culture more widely.

I suggest that The Odyssey is a little bit like our own lives. Hopefully our stories have fewer monsters, but there are some principles that I think remain.

What can we learn from Odysseus?

1. Your journey. The hero’s journey is epic, involving unexpected twists and turns. The memory of the hero is a little bit faded, confused, out of synch: episodes are remembered out of order, and sometimes it is hard to make sense of the overarching narrative. So for us, too, events do not always make sense when they happen. Things are confusing. There may be a cause and effect, but it is not always obvious at the time. All of us start from somewhere (Troy? Ithaca?) and travel somewhere (home?). It could be that your journey takes unexpected twists and turns. Ellis and Tupper write about squiggly careers (see amazingif.com), and others have made the same observation: careers in our current economic climate are rarely linear. There may be a series of unplanned – as well as maybe some anticipated – changes, leading you to your final destination. How can you best prepare yourself for a world where AI is becoming more widespread? How can you future-proof yourself against the winds and tides of “outrageous fortune”; your own “sea of troubles” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)? Odysseus had a ship and a battle-hardened crew, along with his courage and ingenuity. Sometimes his hubris, however, may have got the best of him. For example, he taunted a cyclops, leading that son of Poseidon to curse Odysseus and his men. How do you guard against those “two imposters” of “Triumph and Disaster”, as Rudyard Kipling put it in his famous poem If? Sometimes our most dangerous enemies become ourselves.
2. Your challenges. The hero’s journey is beset with dangers. I was reminded recently, while delivering a session on business to a group of students, of the words of Gandalf in The Lord of The Rings. The hero, Frodo, laments the tragedy and danger that has been brought into his life by the evil magic ring. He wishes “none of this had happened.” Gandalf responds by saying that everyone who lives to see such times thinks the same. He teaches Frodo that all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. In our own lives, we may face tragedy, redirection, disappointment, failure (real or perceived), and more. Trouble may be unavoidable: what we can control is our response. How do we face our own monsters? What processes (and preparations) do we put in place? Perhaps, like Odysseus, we need to tie ourselves to the mast of our ship – maintain our forward direction – without getting derailed by the sirens’ song. What might that look like for you in your context/s?
3. Your destination. Sometimes what keeps us moving forward is the knowledge of what we are looking for. It might be that you, like Odysseus, long to return home. Home might be a physical place, or it may take some other form. There are many examples of athletes running in races who fail at the last because they turn aside from their goal and compare themselves to others in the race. Odysseus was forewarned about his homecoming, that all may not be as he hopes or expects. Sometimes our hardest battles are fought at the end of our journeys, when we are tired and weary, yet experienced. There is, perhaps, no substitute for learned wisdom, gained from experience. What is your desired destination? How can you keep yourself focussed on it?

Odysseus does return home at the end of the story. His way is beset with challenges, some, perhaps, of his own making, and he has to learn to adapt and overcome. His resources change, his outlook changes, and his priorities change. He is forced to view his own moral and ethical decisions, as in a mirror, and this causes untold mental distress.

For us, we may not have the same level of stress: it may be that it takes a different form. To be human in this world is to experience risk, tragedy, and challenge. The forging of a hero is in the little moments — the small decisions that make up a life.

I hope your journey leads you to find your true home. Along the way, maybe don’t taunt a cyclops so that it curses you. (My grandpa used to say, “Don’t tempt Providence.” Slightly different thing, but similar vibe.) Life is hard enough without the meddling interference of vengeful Poseidon. Don’t make life harder for yourself than it needs to be.

All images created using AI