Odysseus knew he could not trust his own judgement once the sirens’ song reached him.
He knew what would happen.
The song would be so beautiful and persuasive that he would want to change course. He would ask his men to untie him. He would believe that what he felt in that moment was right.
That is why he had himself tied to the mast before he heard the song.
Not because he was weak.
But because he understood human weakness.
He knew that once the sirens began to sing, the illusion would no longer look like an illusion.
It would look like the truth.
We all have our sirens
I have thought quite a lot about this story.
Perhaps because, as I have grown older, I have become less convinced that good decisions are primarily about willpower.
We like to believe that when the moment comes, we will simply choose correctly.
We will stand by what we decided.
We will remember what truly matters to us.
But that is not always how people work.
Our sirens can be money. Recognition. Status. Love. Anger. Fear. The need to be right. The desire to fit in. A new business opportunity that seems impossible to turn down. Or simply the powerful desire to escape discomfort here and now.
In the moment, all of this can seem perfectly reasonable.
Then we find the arguments.
That is one of the most remarkable things about us. We are incredibly good at constructing logical explanations around what we already want to do.
The mast has to come first
That is why I do not see the story of Odysseus primarily as a story about self-discipline.
It is a story about preparation.
He made the decision before he had to make the decision.
There is a big difference.
We can do the same.
We can decide in advance which values will guide us when things get difficult.
We can decide which boundaries we will not move, even if we want to in the moment.
We can decide what “enough” means before more starts calling.
We can decide how we want to treat our people before we become angry.
We can decide what kind of person we want to be before the price of that decision becomes clear.
The mast can be a value.
It can be a rule.
It can be a promise.
It can be someone we trust to tell us the truth.
It can be a decision we made with a clear mind and do not want a passing emotion to rewrite.
The feeling is not the enemy
I do not think the answer is to try to become emotionless.
Odysseus did not stop his ears.
He listened.
I think that is an important part of the story.
Emotions tell us many things. They show what we long for, what we fear, where we want to belong and what we feel we are losing.
But a feeling is not the same as the truth.
A credible voice is not the same as the truth.
And a persuasive argument is not necessarily the truth either.
In my original reflection, I used the old concepts of Pathos, Ethos and Logos. Emotion, credibility and reasoning.
I think they apply just as well to everyday life.
What am I feeling?
Why am I feeling this?
Who or what is influencing me right now?
And when the noise falls silent, which arguments still stand?
The questions matter more than the answers
I have long said that if I ever write a book, it should probably be called:
I do not know!
Over time, I have grown increasingly fond of those words.
Not because answers do not matter.
But because “I do not know” gives you permission to ask.
And experience has taught me again and again that the truth often does not lie in the first answer.
It begins with the question.
Perhaps especially the question we least want to ask.
Why do I want this so much?
What am I afraid will happen if I say no?
Am I choosing this because it fits what matters to me, or because the sirens are singing particularly beautifully today?
What have you tied yourself to?
Odysseus had the advantage of knowing the sirens were ahead.
We do not always have that luxury.
But most of us know at least some of our patterns.
We know where we are likely to give in.
We know which situations cloud our judgement.
We often know the stories we tell ourselves when we want to justify something we know, deep down, does not fit.
That is why one question feels increasingly important to me:
What have I tied my judgement to before the singing begins?
My values?
My long-term goals?
The people who matter most to me?
My decision about how I want to live?
Or am I simply trusting that the future version of me will be strong enough to resist the song?
Odysseus did not take that risk.
He did not stop his ears. He listened to the sirens.
But he had tied himself to the mast before they reached him.
Do you know which sirens are singing to you?
And what have you tied your judgement to?