I've been thinking about the ways in which my students will integrate classic literature and its overarching themes. My students are a rather willing group since they chose our Classics Academy, but that doesn't mean this is going to be as easy as a pleasure cruise across the Mediterranean. Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, O'Neill--their writings are dense, complex, and will test all our patience and willingness; enthusiasm will wane--but hopefully wax again. On the one hand, it is not fair to expect them to be excited about working as hard as the men sculling those black ships over the wine dark sea, but I do not want them to feel their efforts are a series of Trojan War skirmishes. I want them to understand our work will help them discover treasures far more beautiful than Achilles' view of Breseis or those hammered gold and silver tripods. So during this morning's yoga practice, while trying to clear my mind, I instead kept returning to the concept of creating relevance for these 21st century students as they explore the origins of western intellectual thought. And I realized that each student will have a different journey and that is exactly how true understanding develops. In many cases I will not even be opening doors for them; rather, I might simply be encouraging them to stray from their comfort zones, their own movements parting the mist to reveal doors to consider. Only then might they contemplate lifting a latch, nudging a door open a crack, or throwing caution to the wind and barreling through. I will try to remember it is always their choice to integrate these wonderful, and often challenging, experiences, and that the knowledge might not be what they expect--at that point I hope someone will bring up Oedipus. The more we mortals learn, the more we realize that we are unlike the deathless gods whose lives are unchanging. We bear the cost of life's lessons in the ebb and flow, the yin and yang of experience. Sometimes we must leave that which we love so dearly that we fear death in its absence. We learn that clenching our fist takes much more energy than relaxing our palm and opening our fingers to the world and that if we do not let go we will die.
Aeneas had to leave Dido in order to fulfill his destiny. Patroclus had to die before Achilles would rejoin the battle and ensure Greek victory, which in turn sealed Achilles' fate. I am convinced after my most recent reading that Achilles' knowledge of his fate made him mad and that madness drove him to gruesomely desecrate Hector's body, one of the most horrific scenes in a text dripping with the blood of mutilated men. Unwelcome knowledge can do that to a man. Yet Odysseus, no happier to possess the truth of two decades away from Ithaca to fight a war over a stolen bride, ventured to the Underworld to learn the most wrenching truth: he would arrive home, but only after losing his men, his ships and the man he had been up until that point. Odysseus was ready for that existential knowledge even if he did not want to be. I hope I am willing to be open to that which I am destined to learn as I help my students be ready for their truths.
Sometimes the truth is hard to hearand sometimes letting go of the things that we hold most dear, which, as you say, is often the key to true insight, is a hard weep to take? So, what does it take to be willing to do that? What is the final straw?
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