The Timeless Life Lessons from ‘The Odyssey’ Before You Watch ‘The Odyssey’

3000 years on… the Epic still guides us to conquer the demons and detours of life

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Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

-Ithaka by Constantine P. Cavafy

**Fade In — **The dark blue sea relentlessly swells into powerful crests, their edges gleaming white under the sun. The waves roar and crash onto the sands, dissolving into turbulent foam and swirling bubbles. The wet sand glistens, the waves retreat, and the next wave prepares to come and wake up the bruised, salt-encrusted man lying face down, known as Odysseus.

In just a few days, even if cinephiles have mixed feelings about the trailer, they will flock to IMAX theatres to witness the Matt Damon starrer ‘The Odyssey’, directed by Christopher Nolan.

The hero’s journey of Odysseus, who, after winning the epic Trojan War, spends ten ruthless years encountering one-eyed giants, seductive sorceresses, sea monsters, and even fights against the will of the gods, trying to go back to Ithaca, his home, his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus.

I was a kid when I used to listen to stories about the fantastical War of the Gods and the adventures of Odysseus. It was all about the monsters and the myth to me. But as I grew up, I realized that beneath the monsters and the myth lies a deep philosophical and psychological masterclass in human resilience, self-reflection, and consciousness. 3000 years later, the world I was born into is equally brutal, chaotic, random, and absurd. Apart from technological and scientific advancements, the problems of power dynamics, ego trips, lust, and the never-ending homesickness remain exactly the same as they were back then.

Today, the Corporate CEOs are the new tyrannical kings whose personal whims can alter the lives of millions of people overnight. The Internet and Social Media are the new marketplace or city center of modern society, where people trade goods, gossip, find partners, cheat on their partners, share political views, and get banned for speaking too much truth. The Billionaires are the new Gods of Mount Olympus, an elite class living in an elevated realm, making erratic decisions that wreak havoc on the lives of the ordinary mortals below — the working class. And just like in ancient times, today’s CEOs often fall victim to ‘Hubris’ — the overwhelming pride that leads them to believe they are above everything, inevitably triggering nemesis — their downfall. However, the blueprint for tackling these problems was laid out by great minds thousands of years ago. One of those was Homer, a blind poet, who gave us ‘The Odyssey’.

The Odyssey is a fantasy epic to us in our childhood, but as we grow up, we find it is a mirror of life itself, an exploration of the human psychological landscape, a masterclass in resilience, and a philosophical breakdown of what it actually means to live in this absurd world.

Here are a few profound, timeless lessons for our modern lives before you witness the great epic on screen–

The Lotus Eaters: Beware of the life free from struggle and sorrow.

Robert S. Duncanson — Land of the Lotos Eaters (1861). Source: Wikimedia Commons — Wikimedia.org

Then someone said, “We will return no more”;

And all at once they sang, “Our island home

Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

**-The Lotos-Eaters **by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Early in his voyage, Odysseus’s ship is blown off course and lands on the island of the Lotus-Eaters. The islanders are peaceful, welcoming people who feed on a plant called the lotus. Odysseus’s men eat the lotus too, and what they experience is ecstatic. They go into a trance of tranquility and apathy. They don’t want to fight, they don’t care about their families, and they lose all desire to return home. They want nothing more than to sit in the sun, consume the lotus, and live in a state of never-ending comfort zone.

Just like the lotus, we now have TikTok, built to keep us pacified with endless scroll feeds and hyper-palatable content after content after content. Whenever we try to do something that requires tenacity, concentration, and willpower, our hand automatically reaches for the smartphone a few inches away. This habit wires our brains to stay in the comfort zone forever. We end up doing a job that’s aimless and pays just enough to keep us from quitting. It gives us the automated, comfortable routine that we long for. We end up smothering our creative ambitions and the great possibilities of our lives because true fulfillment requires struggle, pain, sitting in front of our laptop, giving us backaches and headaches. When comfort replaces our sense of purpose, we aren’t truly living.

Odysseus, realizing the problem, dragged his men out of the island and brought them to the ship. We, too, sometimes have to ruthlessly drag ourselves away from the things that feel good in the moment to preserve the future we actually want. Instant gratification or long-term immortality through your contribution to society — the choice is ours.

Outmaneuvering the ‘Cyclops’: Strategy beats scale. Hard Work beats Talent.

Arnold Böcklin — Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896). Source: Wikipedia

Odysseus drags them out of the island of the Lotus plant and heads towards home again, only to meet another huge obstacle — the man-eating Cyclops, who traps Odysseus and his men in the cave of Polyphemus. Odysseus realizes he cannot defeat Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant, with muscle and if he kills the giant in his sleep, he and his men will remain trapped inside the cave forever. In life, we keep meeting ‘Cyclopes’ in the form of overwhelming problems, such as rigid bureaucracies or sudden financial and health crises. We just cannot fight these obstacles with force, anger, or stubbornness, can we?

Odysseus takes the help of his metis — his cunning intelligence. He pauses, assesses the situation, controls his impulses, and comes up with a plan. He offers Polyphemus wine, getting him completely drunk. Polyphemus asks for Odysseus’ name, and he replies —

“Nobody…”

Once the monster passes out, Odysseus and his men sharpen a wooden stake and blind the giant’s single eye. The Cyclops screams in agony, bringing his neighbor giants running to the cave entrance. They ask who is hurting him.

He roars back, “Nobody is killing me!”

Confused, the other giants go back to sleep. The next morning, Odysseus and his men escape by clinging to the bellies of the giant’s sheep as they go out to pasture. Similarly, in our lives, we need to be prepared for such situations and have a calm mind to come up with a plan to make the impossible…possible!

“Tell them it was Odysseus”: Cost of Ego

Pellegrino Tibaldi — The Blinding of Polyphemus (1554). Source: www.wga.hu

Odysseus brilliantly guides his men out of the Cyclops’ grip but ends up making a terrible mistake of falling prey to Hubris — overwhelming pride. Safe on his ship and pulling away from the shore, Odysseus yells out -

“If anyone asks who blinded you, tell them it was Odysseus, raider of cities, Laertes’ son, who makes his home in Ithaca!”

Just like we lose our minds when we achieve the unthinkable. We become pompous and delusional, make a mistake, and lose what we achieve with so much hard work.

Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea. The Cyclops prays to his father, who hears it and says that it will destroy Odysseus’s entire fleet, kill every single one of his men, and doom him to wander the seas alone for a decade. Ego, after all, is a liability, and true achievements don’t need validation from irrelevant people.

In Bed with Circe and The Song of the Sirens: How lust and seduction can completely derail our lives.

Wright Barker (1889). Source: Wikimedia Commons — Wikimedia.org

Food and sex are the primary needs of any animal, and we are animals too.

Odysseus lands on the island of Circe, the alluring seductress, who is also lethal. When his men visit her palace, she feeds them a luxurious feast laced with a magical drug. They give in to their gluttony and carnal desires, and she turns them into pigs. This is how lust and unchecked physical indulgence degrade us. Cheating and instant gratification in terms of sex are just a click away in today’s times. By giving in to hedonistic pursuits, we allow sex to turn us into animals. We sacrifice our morals, values, dignity, and most importantly, our greater goal in life, just to feed at the trough of immediate gratification.

Odysseus manages to get help from the god Hermes, who gives him an antidote called Moly. It makes him immune to Circe’s drugs. She realizes the drug is not working. Odysseus draws his sword, and she shifts strategies by trying to seduce him -

“Let us slide our swords into their sheaths and slip into bed together, so that tangled in love we can learn to trust each other.”

Odysseus is well aware that it’s a trick. He refuses. She swears by the gods that she will not plot any further mischief against him. She transforms his men back from pigs into humans. Her actions look genuine. She treats them with good food and wine.

Odysseus, too, gives in to his urges and sleeps with her. He genuinely enjoys the luxury, and his longing for home seems temporarily paused. He loves Penelope, no doubt about that, but he forgets everything when he is with Circe, night after night. He almost loses track of time and his primary goal.

We also end up doing the unexpected in our lives. When there is a prolonged distance between lovers, it just takes one moment to do the unthinkable. The lure of a foreign, unknown body is so much that we end up giving in to it. We let our hormones and the animalistic instinct of mating take over.

But then, gathering back your senses and coming out of it takes courage. To accept that yes, my terrible choices in life have caused me immense harm, but still, there is a way out. I still have plenty of time to make my life fruitful and pursue a greater purpose. Odysseus, too, realizes his mistake, and when his men wake him up saying –

“Strange man, bethink thee now at last of thy native land, if it is fated for thee to be saved, and to reach thy high-roofed house and thy native land.”

Odysseus’ sense of duty comes back. He realizes no amount of sex with other women will give what a hug from his wife and son can give. He pleads with Circe to let them leave, and she does so without resistance. She respects his choice to return home. She turns from a lover into a divine guide.

Scylla or Charybdis: The ability to make a choice and have the courage to let go.

Ulysses and Scylla (1794) by Johann Heinrich Füssli. Source: Wikimedia Commons — Wikimedia.org

Odysseus then faces a tough dilemma — on one side is Scylla, a six-headed monster. If Odysseus sails too close to her, she will pluck six of his men, devouring them alive. On the other side is Charybdis, a whirlpool so massive that it swallows everything. Odysseus can’t afford to sail too close, or the whirlpool will drag the entire ship to the bottom of the sea.

Odysseus is left with no other choice but to make a harrowing calculation. He chooses Scylla and accepts the tragic loss of six men to ensure the survival of the rest of his men. We have to make such tough sacrifices in our lives. These moments of choice alter the course of our lives, and it is these choices that make or break our dreams and ambitions. It is a heartbreaking dilemma, but we must find the strength and maturity to choose one and let go of the other. We must evaluate the situation, accept the necessary sacrifice, and keep moving forward.

“Ithaca, my home”: Why materialistic achievements without a greater purpose are absolutely immaterial.

The Return of Odysseus (1849) by Gustave Boulanger. Source: Wikimedia Commons

“The things you really need are few and easy to come by; but the things you can imagine you need are infinite…” — Epicurus.

We find it tough to realize that what we have in our lives is not ordinary but something extremely special. Ordinary things become special only when you don’t have access to them…like our home. When we are in our home, we long for the outer world, but when we are stuck in a faraway land for years, all we want is to go home.

When, after twenty long years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, he is not welcomed by anyone. He looks like a beggar. He finds his palace overrun by over a hundred arrogant suitors eating his food, drinking his wine, and trying to woo his love, Penelope. He walks into his own home, observing everything in silence, assessing who is loyal and who is corrupt before finally reclaiming his throne.

When he left for the war, he was a young king obsessed with glory and fame. But over twenty years of suffering, he loses his ships, his treasures, and his status. He is, after all, nothing but a mere human, and at the end of the day, all he wants is to be with his wife, son, and his home.

Ultimately, it’s not the destination, it’s always the journey.

The Trojan Horse (1874) by Henri Paul Motte. Source: WikiArt.org

Odysseus’s journey back to his wife and son took twenty years, despite his being the best. So, when we think we are the best and complain that good things still don’t happen to us, we must realize that we might not be the best. The journey is not over yet. If the bravest and the sharpest King Odysseus has to undergo such grueling trials by the universe, it means he still has a lot to learn in life.

Similarly, we have our own monsters, our own temptations, moments of almost indulging in casual sex, and situations of making impossible choices. Instead of complaining, we must embrace the journey with open arms, keep ‘our Ithaca’ firmly fixed in our mind, protect our ego, and trust our intelligence over raw force, and we will eventually find our way home. Even if we don’t succeed, we can at least say — “I tried!”

So, choose a journey, a path, a purpose in life that really matters to you, that helps you find the truth. Where you enjoy the process, the journey rather than worrying about how quickly you will reach your destination. And only then do you have any chances to reach your destination and make your dreams come true.

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Kindly follow me here, and also, let me know what your ‘Ithaca’ looks like in the comments.

Merci!