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| The following is excerpted from Travels with Odysseus: Uncommon Wisdom from Homer’s Odyssey ©Michael J. Goldberg, 2006. Here is a section about the Aeolians, Sevens, who party-on without end on an island with no fixed location, that bobbers where the winds blow. |
AEOLUS: THE WIND DONE GONE
What you see is not what you get
“Nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image.”
-C.G. Jung
“Man’s reach must exceed his grasp,
else what’s a heaven for?”
-Robert Browning
Next Odysseus reaches Aeolia, home of Aeolus, who is Master of the Winds. Aeolia is an island that floats whimsically on the sea with no fixed location; it bobbers wherever the winds blow it.
The Aeolians live lightly, playfully, spontaneously. Each day they enjoy an elegant party with food and music. The conversation is witty, bubbly and sophisticated. They have every conceivable kind of luxury. And at night, according to Odysseus, they sleep with their mates on lavish, ornate bedsteads.
The Aeolians, says Odysseus, “feast on without end”. Not only is the party ongoing, but the Aeolians also have the optimist’s sense that it will never end, like the partygoers on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley in the 1990’s.
But Odysseus and his men want to get home, and not just party.
Still, even the most sober traveler could not ignore the fun, lightness and excitement, the great spirit of the place. The crew parties-on for a full month.
And as Odysseus prepares to leave, Aeolus presents him with a magical gift: an ox-skin inside of which he has tied all the winds except for Zephyr, the West Wind, which was left free to blow Odysseus and his crew home to Ithaca.
With Zephyr at their back, in nine days they are at last so close to home that Odysseus can see Ithaca, he can see the shepherds tending fires, so close that he has a bird’s eye view of the island in sharp detail, and he must be beyond joy. He can smell it, and he can taste it. It is a spectacular, numinous vision of home, just what he had hoped. It is what the psychologist Abe Maslow would have called a peak experience; and it is as high as Odysseus will get, and as close as he will get to Home, until he actually makes it to Ithaca nine years from now. (You might say it is a “peek experience”: Odysseus gets a good look at what might be. And it is Aeolus’ doing.)
But now Odysseus tires and dozes off, a sign that something imaginal is happening, that his normal waking consciousness can’t contain or process events. Who would not be overwhelmed, glutted, by such a clear and close vision of the end of his long journey?
Sorry to say, with Odysseus fast asleep, the crew starts to talk amongst themselves, muttering that Aeolus has surely stuffed the ox-skin (which holds the winds) with silver and gold and treasure for Odysseus alone. Upset that they might be cheated, the impudent, imprudent crew breaks the bag open. They are looking for a windfall, and they get it. All the winds escape and the furious whirlwind blasts them right back to Aeolia.
“With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves...
They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind”
-- Hosea 7:8
Back on Aeolia, a devastated Odysseus humbly approaches Aeolus once again for a second wind, but Aeolus declines: If the gods detest you that much pal, you’re not getting any help from me. Aeolus doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the winds are blowing. He does not like bad vibes at all, and in the face of them he is surprisingly cold-hearted, dismissive and cynical. The bright, fun, playful, helpful consciousness of Aeolus that Odysseus left behind has already floated away by the time of the blowback. Aeolus is in “another place” now.
And Odysseus is left holding the (wind) bag.
There comes a time in life when you know where you want to go, you get wind of it. You can imagine it. This is the time to pay your respects to dazzling Aeolus who can inspire, clarify and refine the vision: he lets the winds of the imagination propel you to where you want to go- so that you can see what it would be like if your dreams were to come true, so that you can see what Ithaca looks like. Aeolia is the place to envision Home.
The central, salient feature of Aeolia is that it is not tied down. It is a (psychological) place with “no fixed location.”
Thus Aeolians are always available for wherever the latest breeze takes them; rootless, they can easily, and without the slightest embarrassment or apology, reverse direction on a whim, and then do it again; consistency is not remotely a concern. Everything is negotiable. They keep their options and opportunities perpetually open.
Aeolia is an ideal place for innovation and improvisation, for taking risks and for experimenting with new ideas. Aeolians are imaginative thinkers because they are not wedded to the conventional wisdom; they are not bound by “where they were” in the past. They naturally think outside the boxes that others are wedged in.
We meet them as smart, charismatic, upbeat people with nimble minds, articulate generalists who can bobber from subject to subject with ease, dilettantes who deftly skim the surface. They will be drawn to the new, the cutting edge, the outré, the latest ideas. Like the floating island itself, they are not anchored to tradition, or to the past, or even to their own history; their focus is utterly on visioning the exciting and new that is just out of reach.
Aeolus’ special gift is to help the traveler strategize and imagine what is yet to come, and to that he adds his particular brand of spirited enthusiasm; as with our hero, Aeolus gins up an extraordinary picture of what-could-be, what Ithaca would be like, just the way you imagine and hope for.
Aeolians are easily found in the vast professional economy of futurists and imagineers, in think tanks and world peace organizations, devising splendid concepts, even spiritual concepts- especially spiritual concepts- that galvanize and inspire and promise to bring everyone together in a just and good world: enthusiastic hope on a grand scale for world change, ending hunger in our lifetime and war as we know it, colonizing other planets.
But Aeolians are not so interested in whether the ideas are practical, or in the trodding and plodding groundwork that it will take to get there.
And that is why it is impossible to get Home from Aeolia. Oh, you can dream your dream house at Aeolia, and even draw up the blueprints. But a real Home entails a commitment to a particular location, to holding your ground, to digging down and excavating, setting a foundation, and building a solid structure. Home, Ithaca, is the opposite of keeping your options open, of following the latest breeze, of not taking responsibility for how things come out.
Whether you in fact get to Ithaca is obviously not Aeolus’ concern: he is more interested in the idea of Ithaca. (If he were more concerned with results, as are the noble Phaecians down the line, he could easily have supplied our hero with further assistance.)
If you have problems with the gods, or your crew, or if there are other bumps in the road related to the practicalities, well, tough. Aeolus will not be interested in your repair (Lt, re- + patria, native country). As with Odysseus, he may get irritated or worse. Difficult personal situations are swept under the rug on this island. He plain doesn’t like hassles. There is no energy for regrets or what-might-have-beens here. If your project tanks, by the time you are back to complain, he will have floated on to another place, anyway.
Without a real-world strategy for reaching a goal, or because the premises themselves change so quickly, Aeolians “wing it.” They launch all kinds of trial balloons and see what will “fly.” They have no shortage of ideas or possibilities, and there is little reason to pre-qualify them, or nail down the details in advance, or work them through.
In our story, Odysseus’ vision is blown away when the crew covets the imagined gold in the wind bags.
But don’t blame the crew: Commonly what looks like a sack of gold in Aeolia, the land of possibilities, will actually be a bag of wind. Ask any high-tech venture capitalist or entrepreneur. (The Aeolian attention naturally goes to the grandest possible upshot. Consider how imaginatively companies were valued by Aeolian promoters during the dot-com boom: by the number of hits to a website as opposed to actual sales, for example, or, as is typical of Aeolian snake oil, by the upside limit -“Do you know how many people are on the Internet!?!”- and not by the realities of the marketplace.)
While it’s easy to get lost in Odysseus’ failure to make it to Ithaca, he has pictured his Home island in clear and most compelling detail. Whatever his disappointment, Odysseus knows that if it is possible to get that close, it is possible to get Home. Who could say that this knowing is not essential?
You’ll know you’re in Aeolia if:
there is great focus on the Big Picture Future
ideas, imagination, and clever, leading edge thinking are central
the give-and-take comes fast (Aeolus means “quick”)
ideas and positions change with the wind
you celebrate a moveable feast: there is no sense of permanence or rootedness
the impulsive, undisciplined, glib locals skim the emotional surface
the culture values having fun and being upbeat
there is little tolerance for the downside possibilities or ideas
loyalty to a company or commitment to seeing things through are not priorites
If you are in Aeolia:
The visit to Aeolus can answer the question: What is possible?
This is the valuable time to envision and plan and imagine the exciting future, to see how your dreams can work.
Ask questions. Explore the widest range of possibilities. Generate alternatives. Aeolus loves hypothesizing.
Travelers get stuck in Aeolia because they are immobilized or intoxicated by possibilities.
Don’t confuse a good idea with practical action. Aeolus can’t get you Home just by helping you imagine Home.
Hard work and meeting responsibilities will get you out of this temporary place and on with the journey
Michael Goldberg, an attorney and management consultant, wrote The 9 Ways of Working. Of this book Enneagram Monthly wrote, “without a doubt one of the best, if not the best, Enneagram books for making our work and personal relationships deeper and more rewarding. No one in business should be without it.” His enneagram clients include the CIA, Motorola, Philips Electronics, Farmers Insurance, Honeywell International and Wells Fargo. His website is www.9WaysofWorking.com.