Odysseus (and Goal-Setting)

I wanted to reflect on The Odyssey, though forgive me, because I'll be going off of two secondary source materials. No, I haven't actually read the original work, but I know it from the 90s Armand Asante movie and more recently from the concept album for a musical version called Epic. Close enough to understand the super long journey to get home, the annoying trials Odysseus has to go through with his crew, and the seeming cruelty of the gods (AKA, life).

Laconically, Odysseus leaves home to fight in a 10-year war, then has a really hard time getting back. There's a lot of of "must learn humility" thrown in there, since he slighted Poseidon by not making a sacrifice when he said he would, plus blinding the sea god's son, claiming to be no man (ie, a god himself). But 10 more years to learn humility? To have to put up with a crew that doesn't always listen and gets them into even more trouble than they needed? Do you think it takes 10 years to learn humility? I would like one or two good years of punishment would be enough for that. The majority of that time is the seven years with Calypso, though apparently the gods are in on her holding him there.

So maybe three years to learn humility, sevcn years to learn how to master himself? He apparently never cheats on Penelope, so seven years with Calypso must make him quite the ascetic. Did he need to learn that though? Do we have any indication that he was an emotionally wild man or like super extreme? He did kill a baby because a god told him to... but here in Greek mythology, the gods are everything, so how could you disobey one?

I'd never want to get on a boat again after 10 years of forced journey.

Anyway, listening to Epic, and since it was childhood when I last watched the Asante movie, I fully realized the length of Odysseus' time away from home. 20 years! If I was Penelope, I'd probably have given him up at ten years. I just felt so bad for him, trying so hard to get home, and then his crew does dumb things like open the bag or kill sacred cows. That's probably the gods acting through them, since Odysseus is the target... but then it takes away agency from the crew, making them just pawns. I mean, they do say the Abrahamic God works through people; like a good gift from God can come in the form of a person offering a job or something. So we might all be pawns but unaware... I never like that idea, even if I do like the idea of us all having a purpose.

Odysseus missed out on Telemachus growing up. He missed out on a lot of prime years being with Penelope; now they only have old age left to them. I do appreciate their bond and constancy towards each other. As a six or seven-year-old, I did not understand 20 years! Now at 34, 20 years has been the majority of my life, and such a vast difference it's made. Me at 14, unsocial, insecure, emotionally immature... totally not the same person as me at 34. So Penelope and Odysseus are reunited most likely as strangers.

You try to do something, say a dream career, and life gets in the way. Pixar's Up illustrates this too. The couple keep pushing off their dream vacation until one day the wife is dead. Odysseus has a dream to get home, and life keeps getting in the way. However, he continues to push through all the adversities until he achieves his goal. His life really sucks for 20 years, with war and travel, but he plows along. I feel like I've been suffering for 20 years with my debt (student loans, etc) and my loneliness (my twin gone and married, me no equivalent relationship), though it's more like eight. I've been pursuing voiceover since 2013 with the hope that it would crush the debt and allow me to leave some legacy behind, proof that I lived and contributed to the world. I have to keep persevering like Odysseus until I can "come home" too.

Come home and never leave, Odysseus

Once Odysseus got home, he had to put things to rights, kill a bunch of suitors, and pass Penelope's test. I guess my test then will be, when I do achieve full-time voiceover status and erase my debts and find a lasting romantic relationship, to adapt to this new life of true freelance and being in partnership. I've been independent for so long and seeing myself as the "starving artist" (though I fight this and do abundance mindset things), it will take some readjustment to be the new person I wish for. I need to keep up the manifestation and journaling so that I slide into that new me before I even have the partner and the full-time voiceover career. Odysseus probably saw himself at home with Penelope even when he was with Calypso for seven years.

So what's the point of this article? Just saying to you and me to keep up the endurance, like our model Odysseus, and eventually we'll have what we want. It could take 20 years, or we could die, or maybe the dream changes... but anyway, I like having something to aim for. Life would be really boring and could even feel pointless without some north star of a project/goal to guide me. Just try not to anger any gods, lest they make the journey cruelly longer. Stay away from people that will add unnecessarily to the years as well, like those guys you can't trust to not open a bag of magical wind.