Who are we when everything else has been stripped away?

I watched The Odyssey in Berlin while I was visiting my daughter and went along expecting an old-fashioned epic.

I was not disappointed.

Our choice of venue in an old school cinema was perfect. It took me back to the films I watched as a child - dusty war epics with a hero from Spartacus to El Cid to Where Eagles Dare. I loved it.

We came away and discussed the film at length and how it was made, truly impressive. But what I was left with was Odysseus’s struggle and pain.

I am now back home and just read a remarkable article; I’ll put a link to it below.

https://www.roemagazine.com/article/the-odyssey-is-proof-that-humans-have-always-been-a-disaster

Its insight and modern perspective of what Homer wrote three thousand years ago is significant and it asks: Has anything really changed?

A line that struck me hard was:

‘Who are we when everything familiar has been taken away’

I stopped, feeling silenced by this and sat for a while. I thought, I don’t know the answer to that question, it’s not apparent to me straight away. I would need time to unpick many things to try to get there. You think you know who you are, but how much of this is just packaging?

Straight away it brought a friend of mine to mind who has been in prison for a long time and for him everything familiar has been taken away completely. He has very little and because he has been there such a long time what was once familiar for him has long since gone. But it is very clear to me that he knows exactly who he is - an incredibly strong and resilient man, he knows who he is and what he stands for - and for this, it sometimes makes his own difficult life, harder to endure.

I pondered do we need to spend long periods away from everyone and everything to find out who we are, to put ourselves through trials of adversity or is there an easier way?

Should there be an easier way?

Is that what Buddhist monks and other spiritual devotees dedicate their lives to?

Do we all need our own Odyssey to strip back all the layers to find out who we really are?

Would we be afraid of what is left once all the familiar is gone and we see who we are? Are we willing to let the familiar fall away for long enough to find out, or is that why we surround ourselves with noise and endless distractions, in case the silence gets too loud and forces us to meet ourselves honestly? My friend had no choice, his actions led him there but maybe he knows something now that we don’t.

And what does it say about the choices we make?

There’s a lot of questions there and in choosing to live the kind of life I live on a small remote island with a tiny community, what does that say about me? I know what brought me here - a job, but more importantly, what makes me stay, that’s the real question.

My own odyssey?