
ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀκτῆς κλαῖε καθήμενος, ἔνθα πάρος περ,
δάκρυσι καὶ στοναχῇσι καὶ ἄλγεσι θυμὸν ἐρέχθων.
πόντον ἐπ᾽ ἀτρύγετον δερκέσκετο δάκρυα λείβων.
Odyssey 5.82-84
“But he [Odysseus], just as before, sat weeping on a promontory, tormented in his heart with tears and groaning and pain. He was gazing intently upon the barren sea, shedding tears.”
In Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, we meet Odysseus here in person for the first time. In the first four books (or ‘chapters’), we experience Odysseus’ long absence from the perspective of those he had left behind: his wife beset by attempts of other men to usurp Odysseus’ position in house and kingdom, and his son doubting his own identity and seeking his father’s whereabouts. She is the queen, after all, and he is the heir apparent.
In Book 5 we meet Odysseus himself, and he is truly a pitiable figure. He sits on a promontory at the seashore. As the captive-guest of the sea-goddess Calypso, he is exiled from his world; nowhere and nobody. Despite the exotic setting and the charms of the goddess herself, Odysseus just wants to return home. Here we are treated to Odysseus’ absence from his perspective: a beguiling nothingness.
Through the lens of StoryPathing, the Odyssey can be read as a story about alienation and the role of personal narrative in claiming personal identity. The narrative of the Odyssey becomes the path by which Odysseus’ authentic personal identity emerges: this is the essence of StoryPathing and is, on one reading, the process by which Odysseus returns home in the largest sense: to personal identity, to place, role, and position, in correlation to others.
This is the human endeavor; Odysseus’ story is our own. The details and trappings are different, but the trajectory, struggling to find one’s way, and goal, to arrive where one belongs, are the same. StoryPathing can be your guide in this process of (re)discovering who you really are through the development of your personal narrative. After reading and teaching the Odyssey for many years, I call my practice ‘Odyssey Consulting and Guidance’ as a nod to my own recognition of the Odyssey as an exquisite paradigm of the transformative power of StoryPathing.
Now is the time for you to take the next step. To go forward you need to learn about yourself and how to convey to others your self-authorship; you will do so by internalizing a personal narrative that aligns with the trajectory of who you truly already are, and offers a glimpse of who you can become.