I was recently chastized for not calling home frequently, which is true. It was over the phone with my oldest brother. I had to hang up on him because of some social thing that I planned on that night. To be honest it was most likely a movie, probably a crappy one too. My brother said to “remember to make time for family.” I did not think much of it then, even though I felt bad for leaving my brother for friends.

Then as I was reading the Odyssey for a literature class, I came across this passage,

“But when day came he sat on the rocky shore and broke his own heart groaning, with eyes wet scanning the bare horizon of the sea.”

Odyssey, Book V, 164-166

To give some background would be a good idea.

I never read the “Odyssey“ before this literature seminar. The epic poem by Homer tells the story of a greek hero, Odysseus. After fighting in a war between the Trojans and Akhaians for nearly ten years, he begins his journey back home to Ithaka from Troy, with a whole fleet of men from his island.

Instead of following Odysseus’ adventures chronologically, the reader is actually taken to a cast away Odysseus who escapes a goddess that has been detaining him for several years. Odysseus floats in and out of consciousness to an island where he retells his story of sea monsters, witches, and goddesses taking him captive.

Parallel with following Odysseus’ storytelling, the reader is also aware that back in his home island, his home has been overrun by men looking to marry his wife and take his kingly palace for themselves. His son Telemakhos, is sent by the gods to figure out where his father is, and bring him back before the suitors overrun the house, and save the queen from her distress who has been denying the piggish men from marrying her.

Okay so, what does this have to do with me?

Odysseus throughout the book is firmly set on going home, and as his men die one by one trying to get back home, he encounters villans that always tempt him to stay behind, and that’s what struck me. That after winning the treasure of war, claiming honor and reputation, they just want to sea the island of their families and forefathers. Screeching Nymphs tempt them to stay behind, witches of beauty and lust capturing them, cannibals chasing them, and Poseidon himself trying to keep Odysseus from coming back home.

Odysseus is no lilly liver, he still sets his hope for returning home, for a homecoming to give closer to the past 20 years:

“Yet, it is true, each day I long for home, long for the sight of home. If any god has marked me out again for shipwreck, my tough heart can undergo it. What hardship have I not long since edured at sea, in battle!”

Book V, 228-233

Forgetting the amazing people who got me where I am today is a deep evil, ingratefulness. But I am not ready to return home. I still have my adventure to go on. I still need more humbling from challenging classes, from challenging complacent spirituality, I still have to fight the Trojan War. I still need to grow up, and encamp in a foreign land. You could say that I have fallen to the temptations of staying here. I love the campus, my friends, classes and professors. I love the conversations and the golden dome rising above the tree line.

But Odysseus reminds me that one day, after I have been left with a weary heart, a weary mind, I will want to go back home. One day I will be fighting those screeching sirens calling me to stay, the day when the deep canyons of the Owyhee wilderness won’t match the depth of my desire for the familiarity of the corn fields, small towns and big personalities. One day I will look from the Hesburgh library’s 12th floor at the horizon, searching the familiar hay fields and sagebrush, and like Odysseus.