Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

by William Bridges

In the world of Greek heroes, Odysseus has just done a unique thing: he has given up his identity. Identities meant fame, and fame meant power. Great heroes sometimes won combats simply by scaring off their opponents. “I am Heracles… Achilles… the great Theseus.” To say, “I am Nobody,” and to find in that new nonidentity a source of power is significant, and it marks a stage of development going beyond the reliance on roles and the “standing-on-my-own-two-feet” stance that is natural to life’s midday. (It is also no accident that the giant who opposes Odysseus in this initiatory struggle carries the name Polyphemus, meaning “famous” in Greek.) For Odysseus has reached the point in his development where he must begin to turn back on himself those forces he has been directing outward at the world. It is the point at which the hero must stop slaying dragons and begin slaying the dragon slayer.