The name Odysseus is taken to mean "Son of Pain." It's thought to be based on the "middle voice" of the Greek verb odussomai which means "to feel anger toward, to rage or hate." The "middle voice" is important, because it means that all the rage and hate is a two-way street. It's not simply taken or received, it's both. The one doing the raging is also raged against.
In his version of
The Odyssey, Robert Fagles makes an interesting clarification in his notes to the text. He points out that the verb odussomai resembles another Greek word: ôdinô, which according to Fagles means "to suffer pain, especially the pain of labor -- as the rigors by which the hero brings his identity to life."
Fagles regards the word Odysseus to mean "'man of pain' but both active and passive, doing and done to, agent and victim both, inflicting and bearing pain yet somehow born himself in the process." One of Fagles' citations points to a margin note found in an old manuscript of
The Odyssey. The note "of uncertain but ancient date," occurs alongside Odysseus's description of a boar hunt he went on in his youth. (Book 19 in
The Odyssey.) The boar wounds Odysseus and Odysseus kills the boar. The note, in Greek, is a comment on the meaning of the scene. It reads: "When he grew up -- when he odysseused."
This ancient commentator turns the name itself -- Odysseus -- into a synonym for growing up. Each of us could just as easily insert our own name to describe our process of growth and emergence. Everyone except me that is, since my name has already been hijacked and now means the exact opposite of the point I'm trying to make. Thanks.
But it's important that one of the oldest western documents we know of, one of the pillars of our perspective has long been recognized to contain this basic truth: we become who we are by taking and inflicting pain. The story, among other things, is a tale about emerging from the acquired details of what we have been taught, and uncovering from that dross the natural glow of who we actually are.
Odysseus is his own frame of reference. He's a bit of a loose cannon, but he's doing it. Each of us needs to become his, her own frame of reference. I'm talking about the reflexive, habitual ability to choose for ourselves, based on our own experience, and according to the deep stirrings of our own hearts. Regardless of what other people think. We have to be able to do so honestly and without pretense. This is a vital ingredient to full life. Building that frame of reference into a trustworthy instrument is a big part of the task. And it's during that process that mistakes get made. Once we're up and running, we tend to treat people with the kindness and respect that goes hand in hand with true individuation. That comes when I feel secure in life, and security only happens if I dive in and undertake my personal odyssey.
One of the hallmarks of being your own frame of reference is the willingness to make mistakes. Those of us who fear making mistakes also fear being ourselves. We don't want to get it wrong. And as a result we do. We get it horribly wrong. But when we allow ourselves to show forth, the little things we fear will go wrong tend to burn up in the fire of our beauty. This crossing over can seem terrible. It can seem like a raging beast to be defeated or outwitted.
Odysseus just goes along, in search of himself, being himself with abandon, until he arrives home to his Penelope. He's proud of who he is. One of his objectives in life is to be known as Odysseus. Along the way he hurts people and gets hurt. He does some brutal things and undergoes some real brutality. He makes some terrible mistakes that get people killed. But it's a story, a dramatic portrayal.
The Odyssey uses extremes to describe what it's like to be a person: one misstep and you can get hurt. Another misstep and you can hurt someone else. The important thing about Odysseus is that he's doing it.
Here in the twenty-first century, we share with Odysseus a common objective: to be known for who we are. The only way to do that is to be who we are and there's the rub. Sometimes being yourself brings pain: for yourself, for others, or both. Most often it's because someone can't take your radiance. When you are yourself you're a light in the world, regardless of how you feel. Any difficult feelings are simply a result of the conditioning you've undergone. If you exhibit confidence you are a true menace. People who lack confidence will be unbalanced by your presence. If your real self happens to be noticeably different from your surroundings you will undoubtedly arouse the fear of those who can't handle or have not discovered their own individuality.
You will experience alienation, fighting, hurt feelings and the insistence that you stop being yourself. It can happen in social groups, between friends, and most especially inside the family. It is this potential for discomfort and pain that keeps many people from ever experiencing who they really are. This means they are cut off from their own true potential, forced to reject or deny their own dreams and feelings. This is no way to live. But it's very common.
This unnatural state is the breeding pool for cruelty, disregard and greediness. Without access to our true selves we cannot act or even think on positive behalf of others or the world around us. We become acquiring machines. Anyone who is kind, who cares and exhibits concern through action, that person has some kind of access to herself which fuels her goodness. A shoot, a seedling of her true nature lives in her heart. The mythic life consists of cultivating that seed. Look at the truly cruel: they are cut off from themselves. Look at the truly loving: they have full access. Most of us are somewhere in between.
One of the hardest things to learn is that the hurt feelings of others are not your responsibility. Other people's feelings are THEIR responsibility. It's typical that we place responsibility for our pain on others. It's typical, and it's wrong. I do not advocate deliberately hurting people. I advocate courtesy, respect and kindness, but all the while being yourself. When that arouses the pain in others, as it inevitably will, that pain is theirs to deal with, not yours. Like Odysseus, you're just being yourself.
The idea of rejecting yourself in favor of protecting someone else from their own feelings is destructive. And it's disrespectful to the other person. When you seek to protect them from life you're saying to them, "You can't handle life as it really is. You need me to make this decision for you." If you were to actually say those words to that person, you'd probably make them angry. By leaving them alone with their feelings you're saying to them, "I trust that you are capable of managing your own feelings as a fellow adult in this world, and you don't need my protection."
When a person experiences their feelings, that person has a chance to grow, to become more free, to release more of their radiance into the world. It's not up to you to make people grow, but you have no right to stand in the way of that growth out of some arrogant belief that you know what is best for them. Or worse, out of some knee-jerk response that makes you try to avoid an awkward situation simply because it's awkward, regardless of the fact that it helps someone else avoid reality. That's the worst form of self preservation, the kind that serves no one, including yourself. The kind that, in fact, robs everyone involved of a life-giving experience.
To give birth to our true identities as people of light and goodness, we have to live. And living is hard if you really do it. It's a risky, tricky, messy situation we're in. It's called the human condition. Huge structures and systems have been contrived to avoid it, to fabricate an alternative. But you can't long escape the deep pool that underlies all experience, not if you want to have life to the full. The ones who thrive here, the ones who walk with confidence in their being are the ones who accept that and just dive in.
Ever forward.
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