"Ithaca": The Beautiful Journey & National Poetry Day

Today, 6th October 2011 is National Poetry Day. Due to this I thought I would publish this reflection inspired by one of my favourite poems “Ithaca” by Constantine P Cavafy. Here read by Sean Connery.

No one can honestly say that can they predict the future, where life will lead us. What we will end up doing or where we will end up going and who we will end up with. We do not know who we will meet along the way and we don’t know what these folk will give or perhaps take from our lives. Some people we will meet only once and never again; some will stay with us a short while and others will be with us until the day our bodies breathe their final breath, but we do not know who these people are the day we are born.

It’s much the same with situations. Some we may experience only once, many we may never experience and others we will continue to experience over and over again. At the beginning of our lives we can not predict what these are and would we really want to even if we could?

I do not personally believe that these are preordained either, before we were born. Do not get me wrong I am not an atheist I have a strong faith in a force that runs through life, that I call God. That said the God of my understanding does not control all life and does allow it to develop freely. For me God offers the Lure of Love to all life but does not control every interaction.

Eight years ago today 6th October 2003 the final stages of a part of my journey were just beginning to end. I entered into what I can only describe as a living hell. Thankfully I came out of this on 10th October 2003 and I have never really been the same man since.

How often have we heard the phrase “Life is a journey”? Sometimes beautiful; sometimes frightening!

For all of us at times just to simply step out into the world takes all the courage we can muster. Past experiences can often stop us dead in our tracks. Fear can block our attempts to step out into the world and back into the adventure of life with all its many challenges. Fear is always present to stop us to block us along the way.

Human history is littered with stories and adventures inspired by the search for treasure and or wisdom Whether these adventures be Jason and the Argonauts or many of the other Greek tales, Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Lord of the Rings - the list is endless. Human history is littered with folk tales and myths which teach us so much about what life is in all its potential both for beauty and horror

Joseph Campbell who spent years exploring such myths believed that these stories helped us to fully understand how we are often called out into new adventures in our lives. He identified four distinct stages of the journey. The first stage Campbell named “The Call to Adventure”. This he claimed is caused by discontent, which draws us out of the comfort of our lives to risk something new; the second stage is a form of initiation where goes through a series of ordeals that test their mental and physical skills; The third stage is the time of revelation the discovery of truth and treasure; the final stage is the return to one’s community. With wisdom gained and with treasure to share.

Throughout our lives we are constantly called out and challenged to the adventure. I have learnt that in order to succeed in this requires faith in life itself and a sense of openness and courage to overcome the challenges that can come our way. I have learnt that the key is not to bring our own monsters with us along the way and therefore just deal with what we meet on the road.

This I believe is what the poem Ithaca is hinting at when it says:

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
 
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Most of the demons that got in my way a few years back were not real at all, but merely fears created from my own past. They made me afraid to try; therefore I ignored the call to adventure for so long. You see the call itself is not enough, there also needs to be faith in the adventure itself that it will be a joy and one worth taking.

This faith comes naturally to children because they have not yet learnt to fear life. I believe that Jesus his hinting at this in Mark 10 v 15. Here Jesus states:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

He is really speaking to his disciples and through this the author of Mark is telling us something of what faith must be, it must have an openness and be an almost innocent faith that the adventure that is life is worth taking. Of course it is talking specifically about Christian faith here, but for me this is a universal principle.

Neither is the call to adventure really about the potential treasure that can be found at the end of it, rather the treasure in it. The poem Ithaca is certainly hinting at this. It is telling the reader to keep “Ithaca”, the call, in mind. It is also telling us that it’s not really the destination but the adventure itself that is the treasure. It ends by saying:

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
 
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithaca means.

The key is the adventure, and to maintain that adventurous spirit. To live with the eyes of and heart of a child, to maintain that sense of awe and wonder that comes so naturally to them. Often in life the greatest gifts can come from the worst horrors, that has certainly been my experience.

How often has it been said that life is what you make it. For me this doesn’t mean you can have whatever you want in life and do whatever your heart desires. In my experience this is not true. That said whatever horrors may be bestowed upon us, something wonderful and beautiful can come from them, if we can only find and maintain that spirit that Jesus saw in children.

As for the destination well who knows the answer to that, certainly not me. I suspect there is more beyond this physical form but I cannot say for certain. In any case that should not stop us from enjoying the adventure we are on now, from learning from it and passing that knowledge on to those we meet further down the road. Wherever it may lead us.

No one can predict the future. I do not believe it has already been written. Personally I think it is better that way. To want to know what will happen is just another form of human vanity that is inspired by a fear without faith.

I’ve grown accustomed to the uncertainty.

Chaos rules ok.

Dread: “A ship in the harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”

The other morning I was walking to my car, about to set off, when I saw a woman getting out of hers about to go into the large school room, for an exercise class. I looked at her, nodded, smiled and said hello. She had a terrified look on her face and then she began to speak. She said “Every week I come here and when I set off I do not know why I am coming.” She continued “Every week I have this horrendous feeling of dread in my stomach, I almost feel sick with fear” “And yet every week once I get started I really enjoy it and feel so much better afterwards.” We spoke for a few minutes about, fear anxiety and faith and then some of the other women arrived for the class, so I left and went about my business. It was interesting to note that although she dreaded coming every week, she was still the first to arrive.

Anyway I drove off and began ruminating about Dread! Like you do!

Fear comes in many forms. Fright is a vital part of our human make up, we really need it. It points to danger etc, it’s a warning signal. There are though other forms of fear which are not useful at all. Perhaps the most debilitating is dread.

Dread is a crippling form of anxiety. It is fed by our desire to control what is beyond our control, the world in which we live. We want to be safe, we want to be secure, but is this realistic? Is life really about being safe and secure? I am not convinced that it is. Sadly, it would appear, when some folk begin to see this reality they can become crippled by the dread of life itself.

Dread is the ultimate in negativity. It can make everything appear bleak. It dulls the senses, turns colours into shades of grey and takes all the taste out of life. It leads to folk projecting all their anxiety and worry onto everything that they do in life and thus takes the very life out of living. It leads to misery.

At it’s worse dread can lead to us into a pit of depression. It traps us with the very things that we believe protect us from the dangers that we see in life. As a result we go deeper into ourselves, until we become lost and trapped within our own black hole. It can be very difficult to find our way out of this black hole. We certainly can’t just dig ourselves out.

I am of course familiar with dread, it did in days gone by rule much of my life. From a young age it would often come over me on Sunday afternoons and evenings, usually when Bullseye was on or Surprise to Surprise, I think that’s why I preferred to be out of the house, so as to deny the reality of returning to school. It was the same in late teens and twenties, but by then alcohol had become a solution to that hideous feeling in my stomach and everything else for that matter. I really didn’t enjoy having to conform to reality. I am of course a much different man today. I have discovered the gift of reality, I know that this is where the joy of living is to be found.

A friend of mine recently posted this on Facebook:

“A ship in the harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”

Of course this isn’t entirely true, ships aren’t always safe in the harbour. Think about the destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. That said I did get her point. By living safely in what we know, the old familiar we may well remain safe, but that really isn’t what life is about. It’s about living, it’s about taking risks, it’s about being out of this state of control from time to time. We cannot protect ourselves from life’s dangers, from suffering. In fact by even trying to do so we end up suffering from something far worse “The suffering within the suffering”, we end up not living at all, we stagnate, we lose everything that makes us human, we do not make best use of the gifts we have been given. What a waste! Dread can be soul destroying and life taking. It disconnects us from life itself.

Grief can often lead to dread, whether through the loss of a loved one or through repeated failure or rejection in life. These losses, these defeats can lead us to believe that we will never know joy again. As Forrest Church highlights Dread combines the fear of death with the fear of life. It makes us fully aware of the fragility of life, but without an appreciation of its preciousness. Therefore the risk required to find colour and flavour in life is seen as hopeless. We say “why take any chance”; we say “nothing ventured, nothing lost”; we say “Why bother?” We withdraw from life, retreat into ourselves until it all looks grey and bleak again. We lose our taste for life. We live disconnected lives.

So what’s the solution? Well for me it’s quite simply to have a little faith; to not allow that feeling in your stomach to rule. The lady I met outside the large school room seemed to have it, in spite of her fear, she just needs to learn how not spoil her morning before arriving at the class. But does this truly deal with the causes of dread? No not really, it only offers a temporary solution to the immediate difficulty. It deals with anxiety one dread at a time, but it doesn’t fully solve the real problem. What about the big picture?

Well it won’t surprise my regular readers to hear that I believe Forrest Church offers a solution.

He said:

"...When suffering overwhelms hope, as it sometimes will, life’s burden feels too heavy for us to shoulder; it may in fact be too heavy to shoulder on our own. We must then turn to others and to God for strength. And for encouragement. Encouraged, we once again take heart. In the face of dread’s most persuasive argument, mustering the courage to act, love, and be, we answer fear’s no with a saving yes”.

We are not alone and we do not need to try and face life alone. By reaching beyond ourselves we can find to courage to live and to be all that we are able to be. If we do we will see life in all its colour and taste it in all its flavour. Sometimes that will mean we will get hurt and even seemingly fail, but at least we will be fully alive. We will be connected to life itself.

So yes a ship is seemingly safe if left in the harbour, but it really isn’t what they are made for.