Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

by William Bridges

Consider Odysseus’s attempt to sail safely between Scylla and Charybdis, the monster and the whirlpool that have come to stand in the Western imagination for the impossible choices in life. The sorceress Circe explains to him that he can negotiate the narrows only if he does not resist the dangers there. Odysseus demurs, announcing that he is Odysseus and will never turn away from combat. “You rash man,” she replies. “Do the works of war concern you still, and toil? Will you not yield to the immortal gods?” But when he arrives at the narrow place in the journey, he “forgot the hard injunction of Circe, when she ordered me in no way to arm myself. I put on my famous armor, took two long spears in my hands, and went up on the deck of the ship at the prow.” The little man standing on the deck of a fragile vessel, playing the hero when the time for heroism had passed!