Gusts, Gods, Ghosts and Guests
More on Homer’s Odyssey, continued from After the War
IV. Storms
At several different points in his journey, terrible storms throw Odysseus off course and threaten to derail his return entirely. They’re bad. The Perfect Storm has nothing on the kind of storms sent by angry gods to punish men for whatever reasons they have. Odysseus and/or his men incur the wrath of Poseidon (god of the sea) and Zeus (god of the sky/king of the gods), so they deal with a fair amount of rough weather in their journey. The storms serve as a fitting reflection of the ways in which uncomfortable and often chaotic feelings and thoughts can disrupt our recovery. One of the great challenges we face in sobriety involves working through the raw emotions that we can no longer numb with our substance solution. In addiction, our chosen substances served as a temporary solution that seemingly rid us of any painful or uncomfortable feelings we didn’t feel we could handle.
After leaving the island of the cyclops, Odysseus and his men spend some time with Aeolus, the god of the winds, who gives them some winds in a bag as a parting gift. It’s a weird gift, but he intends it to aid in their journey home if used in the right way and at the right time. Though Odysseus instructs his men to leave it alone, they open it the minute their leader falls asleep - in a tragic twist of fate, this all happens on the very day that the shores of Ithaca become visible from the ship. The combined consequence of Odysseus’s falling asleep and his crew’s misuse of the winds serves as a fitting reflection of the internal chaos we suffer when we let our feelings of fear and resentment run the show. When we fall asleep in our recovery work, we lose the vigilance that monitors the role our ego plays in letting our fears dominate our thinking or making other people’s actions about us. We take things personally that aren’t about us at all, or we turn to self reliance to cope with seemingly terrible, painful circumstances that mainly hurt us through our misguided attempts to preserve ourselves. And when we let our defense slip in this way, all the feelings take over in a storm similar to the one that is born when Aeolus’s winds rush free from their holding. It’s overwhelming when we try to fight them, silence them or just escape them. I haven’t been at sea in a windstorm, but I have some experience running in windy conditions, so I can relate a bit to the difficulty of moving against it. Fighting the wind is a lost battle, so is fighting our emotions or trying to hold them in. Fortunately for us, if we’d only realize it, it’s not a battle we’re meant to fight.
However, our ego often steps in to demand that we enlist in this fight, because the ego feels threatened when we experience certain uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. And when we allow our ego to take control, we find ourselves blown off course in our recovery. We put up walls meant to hide our weaknesses or protect us from harm, but they only keep us from being fully connected to our people. When I’m feeling overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety or grief, I often fall back into the belief that I need to ride out the storm of those emotions on my own. I fear that others will find these storms too messy and reject me for it, so I hide it all and unwittingly disconnect myself before anyone else can do that and hurt me even more. I see the error in that self-reliant kind of thinking, but I don’t think I’m alone in the cycle. It’s hard to be open about what’s going on in our minds when it feels chaotic and uncertain because we can’t predict or control how others will receive us. We have the tendency to invalidate the feelings by hiding or ignoring them, but we do ourselves a disservice in this practice. Our feelings do serve a purpose, as uncomfortable and seemingly disruptive as they can be. When Aeolus gifts winds to Odysseus, he sees the risk that misuse of the gift poses, but he intends them for a good purpose. His winds are meant to direct Odysseus and his men toward home if they were only able to align themselves with the winds in the right way. They fail to do this, so the winds blow them off course and necessitate regrouping and a longer voyage. But the potential for good is there. It’s the same with our feelings. Our feelings stem from within even if they seem like attacks beyond our capacity to control. If we can recognize them and accept them as they are and let them be part of our journey rather than an obstruction to it, we put ourselves in a better place on our path of recovery. When we encounter grief, anger, anxiety or any other uncomfortable feeling that we naturally want gone, we can pause and choose to accept it as valid and an informative part of our growth. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary for our recovery.
V. Higher Powers
The gods play a central role throughout Odysseus’s journey, though their involvement remains largely unseen by him and his men. We see it pretty clearly because we’ve got Homer narrating, but the Greeks lack that advantage, so we get to see them struggle in the same way we do when we trust in a higher power we can’t fathom with our senses. Odysseus is a special favorite of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. The Greek gods often pick favorites and like to do what they can to see their chosen mortals succeed in whatever ventures they’re about on earth. Athena has been doing that with Odysseus, and in The Odyssey, she provides help to both her hero and his son. Though she can’t teleport him to Ithaca in record time due to conflicting interests with fellow immortals, Athena does what she can to protect and guide him and his family.
She shows up under the guise of an old man named Mentor (an old friend of Odysseus) to give advice to Telemachus in his father’s absence. This is cool for a couple reasons. One, it leads to the eventual adoption of our term mentor, though it took some time and another literature use for it to catch on. Athena’s Mentor role also illustrates the ways in which our higher power can work through the people in our lives. Athena takes on the role of someone known by Odysseus and the people in his life in order to guide them. Our higher power, or God, works in a similar way through the people we encounter in our lives. He may not be disguised as our next door neighbor or little sister, but he works through them in other ways and is present in their roles in our lives. If we can trust in the plan of a higher power, we can see the varying roles that our people play in our growth. God puts people in our lives for a reason, even if we fail to see it or take some time to appreciate that reason. It’s something to consider that the same goes for us: we’re in other people’s lives for a reason. Hopefully not just to give them the opportunity to practice love and tolerance when they’d rather not.
Athena represents our higher power, and the other gods who have a hand in Odysseus’s fate reflect the presence of forces beyond our control in our lives. Athena wants good for Odysseus and steps in when he’s dealing with more than he can handle; she doesn’t cause the difficulties he encounters, but she doesn’t prevent them either. She lets him deal with hardship because he’s either earned it through his actions, because it takes more than a minute to convince her father, Zeus, that she should have her way over Poseidon, or because she knows he can make it through and be stronger for it. When we’re able to trust in a higher power having a plan for us, it doesn’t mean all our hardships disappear, but it does mean we can be more confident in our ability to triumph over obstacles that would be impossible on our own.
Not all the gods play a guiding role in Odysseus’s journey. Poseidon doesn’t want good for Odysseus; he wants to punish him. Zeus sides with him at times, and Aeolus, Circe and Calypso contribute in their own ways to delaying his progress. Their involvement in the trajectory of his journey reflects the impact that forces beyond our control play in our lives. When we look at Odysseus’s journey through this lens, as that of a man whose success depends in many ways on the whims and workings of immortal beings operating with intellectual and physical capacity much greater than his, we see the emphasis on his and our smallness in the grand scheme of things. We too are small parts of a greater picture, and despite the insistence of our ego that we can control our pain and progress, we can’t control so much in life. Odysseus does have some agency in his story, but there is a whole side to the Odyssey that takes place beyond his ability to comprehend. In our lives, both in addiction and recovery, there are factors beyond our control. We pray for the serenity to accept these things, the courage to make whatever changes lie in our control to make, and the wisdom to know the difference between what we must accept and what we can change. It’s a simple prayer, but it can be hard to put into action. Praying is a good place to start.
VI. Visiting the Underworld
Odysseus spends some time on the island of Circe, a goddess who entraps him and his men in her palace, but when our leader finally decides it’s time to leave, he seeks Circe’s help. She advises Odysseus to seek the guidance of Tieresias, the blind prophet whose soul dwells in the Underworld (also called Hades for the god who rules it), and gives him directions to enter this place since one does not simply walk into Hades. The Underworld is for souls and the gods who rule them; it’s not designed for living mortals nor intended for their chance visits. Though their Underworld is a different landscape than the flame-filled nature of the Christian hell, the Underworld still possesses an element of horror for humans in that it’s a realm of death, and those condemned to the terrain of Hades walk in exile from their lives on earth. Even the heroes who occupy a much nicer area of the Underworld lament that same loss; drinking from Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, helps erase that pain in the same way the lotus plants do on the island visited by Odysseus earlier in his travels.
In the ancient mythology, Odysseus is one of a select number of individuals who descend into this unknown territory and return back to the living world - the Greek term for this kind of experience is katabasis: a journey down. The fact that the Greeks had a unique word for a mortal’s descent into the Underworld suggests the profound significance of this kind of venture. For a living person to enter a realm intended only for souls and specific gods was something both unnatural and heroic. Unnatural in the sense that it was not meant for mortals to live there or mingle with the ghosts there, and heroic for the courage it takes to go somewhere from which return would be in the hands of the gods rather than a certainty.
This unnatural feature of the Underworld reflects how certain experiences can be for us in recovery. We are not meant to go to a mental space that feels like exile from living, but sometimes we find ourselves there. These are experiences of desperation, loneliness, shame and any other form of pain that feels as though it’s taking us from the place of joy and gratitude we try to keep in our hearts. Odysseus enters Hades to seek guidance from a ghost; similarly, we might revisit painful memories to analyze something that can be of use to our recovery. When we reopen the past, even to learn something, we risk slipping back into the mental state of that past time and letting ourselves stay in those thoughts and feelings. The ghosts from our past can seem so real and consequential that we stay in these spaces longer than we intended. But we’re not meant to dwell here. Just as mortals aren’t meant to enter Hades, neither are we meant to dwell in the shadows of our time in addiction. Those shadows take many forms and often slip into our lives so easily that we don’t realize it’s happening right away, but we don’t have to live in the kind of Underworld life they bring with them. The shades in Hades exist in a lifeless state of being in which they constantly grieve the loss of life on earth. If we stay in our shadows of shame, or let the ghosts of past memories and relationships haunt us, we’re not doing much better than those dead Greek shades. We can visit our Underworld, and we should acknowledge our surroundings while we’re there, but we need to remember that we don’t have to live there. When I let myself drift into memories of a loss or a past relationship, a particularly shameful episode from my drinking, or a feeling that echoes how I felt at my worst in addiction, it helps a lot if I’m able to have the presence of mind to look at why I’m going those places and to remember that I’m not meant to stay there. We’re meant to live in the light, with other living people who share that same gift of being free. And if we slip back into the mindset of addiction, that light and freedom are still accessible to us if we can reach outside ourselves and connect to another person or our higher power to find a way back.
VII. Closer to Home
Another storm washes Odysseus onto the shores of the island Scheria; it destroys the raft he has built to leave Calypso’s island and leaves him alone and helpless yet again, which is kind of rough after the ten years he’s been through. He has lost confidence in his ability to get himself home, his men are all gone and the little raft he built is toast, and he has no clue where he is. In this place of desperation, he receives the first truly selfless kindness of his travels. The princess Nausicaa finds him (guided to him by Athena); and even though she voices the possibility that a man in such a desperate state may be in a bad way with the gods, she makes the gametime decision to trust him and bring him to her father. Alcinous too decides to welcome the stranger, showing him every hospitality and promising to give him the resources he needs to get home. With these people, he finally experiences a genuine welcome and the promise of home and help, not for his accomplishments or status, but for being in a place of need. This experience of hospitality gives Odysseus a piece of home after his lowest points. The welcome of the Phaeacians revives him and gives him the strength he needs to carry on.
It’s not the end of his suffering or trial, but it’s a period of peace and assurance, and I think there’s significance in its place as the final stop before he finally reaches Ithaca. Each of the stops on his decade-long sea voyage functions as a trial that he needs to surpass in order to become the kind of man who can recover his true sense of home. He faces his ego and his fears and sees the destructive nature of these defects, all the while believing his own will and strength can navigate him and his crew safely through the dangers. However, he arrives at the shores of Scheria alone and completely stripped of this sense of his own power. Odysseus’s role as a leader has fortified his conviction in his ability to manage his return home, but without his crew he has lost that self-assuredness. Defeated by the storm of Poseidon, he has lost hope in his ability to get home on his own terms and finally accepts the will of the gods as superior to his own. In this state he finally experiences the welcome of another nation of people. Alcinous notices Odysseus’s tears as they listen to a bard’s account of the Trojan war and asks him to reveal his identity and tell his story. These people give him the space and attention to be open, and the circumstances in which he relates the events that ended the war and followed it mirror the kind of space we find in recovery to share our stories. Odysseus’s state of helplessness lets him be vulnerable with his hosts; he doesn’t relate his tale to prove something or to brag; he does so as a guest complying with the request of the king who has taken care of him.
The Phaeacians episode reflects the importance of vulnerability as well as the crucial role that sharing our story plays in cultivating connection and with moving forward in our journey. Alcinous expresses interest in his guest and concern for his wellbeing; this investment prompts him to ask for Odysseus’s story. He also only asks for this stranger’s name and story after he’s welcomed the other man into his home and shown him the kind of hospitality and care that assures Odysseus that his host cares. Odysseus entrusts his story to him not because he knows exactly how it will be received or thinks it will elevate him in the king’s perspective, but because Alcinous has been kind to him and has expressed a willingness to listen. We can learn as much from Alcinous as we can from Odysseus. The two are strangers to each other, yet they take the risk of trusting the other without knowing how their relationship will go beyond the point of letting the other in. That’s really all we can do. We can’t predict how people will be when we let them into our lives, and we can’t control how they’ll receive our stories when we give more of ourselves to them, but we have to start somewhere. We can start small or slow; it can be a hard thing to give and feel worthy of trust - I definitely know that struggle. I’ve struggled with trusting, but I’ve also struggled to view myself as someone others want to trust. It’s an empty feeling to think that we have no one on our side and no one who wants us on their side. If we can just be open, like Alcinous, to giving in the ways we can, even if all we can offer is friendship or a space to be heard; or if we can give people a chance, like Odysseus, and let them see us for all our good and bad, we may find that this struggle lessens and that we’ve made progress in our own way at least by being open to that connection.
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He gets there eventually; homecoming and other things in the works.
