What The Odyssey can still teach us about life in Whanganui—and anywhere else
This Thursday morning, I am going to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey at the Embassy 3 Theatre in Whanganui with a friend.
We have both seen The Return, the earlier film starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope. That film begins near the end of the story, when Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca after twenty years away. It is a powerful account of what war, separation and time have done to him, his family and his home.
Nolan’s film promises something much larger: the journey itself, with its storms, monsters, temptations, mistakes, gods and narrow escapes.
But the more I have thought about The Odyssey, the less it seems to be merely a collection of ancient adventures.
It is really a series of questions.
What keeps us moving when progress is slow? What distracts us from what matters? How do we deal with forces beyond our control? What happens when our pride overrides our judgement? What does leadership require when other people will not do what we think they should? And what does it truly mean to come home?
These questions are not confined to ancient Greece.
Nor does The Odyssey possess some exclusive claim over human wisdom. Aotearoa has its own pūrākau, histories and ways of understanding journeys, identity, ancestors, belonging and responsibility. Chinese, Korean, Russian, Indian, African, Pacific and other cultures have their own stories.
They are not all versions of exactly the same tale, and we should not flatten their differences. But people everywhere have wrestled with temptation, loss, loyalty, courage, pride, uncertainty and the search for somewhere—or something—to call home.
The Odyssey is one doorway into that much larger human conversation.
1. Know what your Ithaca is
The lesson is not simply, “Get home.”
It is: know what home means to you.
Odysseus’s Ithaca was his land, his family and his responsibilities. For us, Ithaca may not be the place where we were born. It may be a purpose, a relationship, a set of values or a community in which we have gradually come to belong.
I grew up in Wellington and on the Kāpiti Coast. For much of my life, that was the landscape I looked back towards. I have lived in Whanganui for only 23 of my 77 years.
But home is not necessarily decided by arithmetic.
Today, Whanganui is home. It is where my present life is taking place, where my friendships and commitments are, and where I have found work that matters to me.
Digital inclusion and equity are part of that purpose. They are not the whole of my life, nor should this ancient story be reduced to one modern cause. But they are one way in which I try to participate in the life of my community.
Our Ithaca is whatever reminds us why we are still making the journey.
Without that sense of direction, we can remain busy while travelling nowhere.
2. Every Cyclops has a blind spot
The Cyclops Polyphemus possesses enormous physical power, but he sees through only one eye.
That makes him a useful image for a very human problem: the belief that the portion of reality we can see is the whole of reality.
Institutions have blind spots. Political movements have them. Businesses, community organisations and professions have them. Technology has them.
So do I.
In the digital inclusion world, people often see the issue through the lens closest to them. One person sees internet connections. Another sees devices. Someone else sees training courses, employment, education, cybersecurity or government services.
Each may be seeing something real. The mistake is believing that their one view explains everybody else’s life.
A person may possess a device and still lack confidence. They may be connected to the internet but unable to recognise a scam. They may complete a course but have nobody to ask when something goes wrong two months later.
Odysseus defeats the Cyclops through ingenuity rather than greater strength. But he also creates further danger when pride makes him reveal his identity.
That is an equally important warning. Seeing another person’s blind spot does not prove that we have none of our own.
Wisdom begins when we become curious about what lies beyond the edge of our own vision.
3. Beware the Lotus-Eaters
The lotus does not destroy people violently. It makes them comfortable enough to forget where they were going.
That may be one of the most contemporary parts of the story.
Our lotus can be endless scrolling, entertainment, outrage, consumerism or simply filling every hour with activity. It can also be resignation: the gradual acceptance that nothing will change, so there is no point attempting anything difficult.
Technology itself can play either role.
It can connect people, restore independence, open access to knowledge and help someone participate more fully in society. But it can also consume attention, magnify anger and make passive observation feel like meaningful involvement.
The question is not whether pleasure or rest is wrong. Odysseus and his crew desperately needed rest.
The question is whether comfort is restoring us for the journey—or quietly persuading us to abandon it.
Every so often, we need to ask:
What am I doing repeatedly that is taking me away from the life I say I want?
4. Intelligence matters more than force—but intelligence needs humanity
Odysseus is not Achilles.
Achilles represents extraordinary physical strength. Odysseus survives primarily through observation, language, strategy, patience and imagination.
That seems especially relevant in a time when many public arguments are conducted as though the loudest or most aggressive person must be the strongest.
Most of our difficult community problems will not be solved by overpowering people. They require us to understand systems, relationships, incentives, history and the circumstances of people whose lives differ from our own.
Whanganui’s position as New Zealand’s only UNESCO City of Design is relevant here. Design at its best is not simply about making attractive objects. It is about understanding a situation properly and creating something that works for the people who will actually use it.
Artificial intelligence can help us think, compare ideas, recognise patterns and express things that we have struggled to put into words. It can widen the field of vision.
But it is not an infallible oracle.
It can make mistakes. It can inherit blind spots from its information and from the questions people ask it. Intelligence becomes useful only when it is joined to judgement, humility, lived experience and concern for other people.
Athena may offer Odysseus wisdom, but Odysseus must still decide what to do with it.
5. Leadership is not the same as control
One of the most frustrating aspects of The Odyssey is that Odysseus frequently warns his crew what will happen—and they do the dangerous thing anyway.
They open the bag of winds when Ithaca is nearly within reach. They kill the sacred cattle after being told not to touch them. Their mistrust, fear and hunger repeatedly undo the journey.
Anyone who has led a business, worked in management, organised a community initiative, raised a family or advocated for change will recognise some version of that experience.
Leadership can be lonely because responsibility and control are not the same thing.
A leader may explain, encourage, warn, support and create opportunities. But other people retain their freedom. They may misunderstand, lose interest, disagree or choose an easier course.
I have experienced that in hospitality, in management and human resources, in working for myself, and now in advocating for digital inclusion and equity.
The loneliness comes partly from seeing something that has not yet become obvious to everyone else.
But The Odyssey also cautions leaders against assuming they are always right. Odysseus’s own pride causes suffering. His decisions sometimes carry terrible costs for other people.
Leadership therefore requires persistence without self-righteousness: continuing to act, while remaining open to the possibility that we may need to change our own course.
6. Home changes—and so do we
Odysseus spends years trying to return to Ithaca.
But when he arrives, neither he nor Ithaca is what it was.
His son has grown up without him. His wife has endured twenty years of uncertainty. His household has been occupied by men who believe he is dead. Odysseus himself has been shaped—and damaged—by war, loss and survival.
That is true of ordinary life as well.
After retirement, illness, bereavement, separation, migration or a major change in circumstances, we sometimes imagine that we are trying to get our old lives back.
Usually, we cannot.
We return to familiar places as different people. The place itself has changed too.
The task is not to reconstruct the past exactly as it was. It is to form a new relationship with the life that remains.
Perhaps that is part of growing older. Home becomes less about recovering an earlier identity and more about deciding how to live truthfully in the present.
Whanganui is not the place where my story began. It is the place where I am now making sense of what the earlier chapters were for.
7. Some forces are beyond us
The Greek gods constantly interfere in Odysseus’s journey.
Today, we might understand them as representing the forces that enter our lives without asking permission: illness, ageing, chance, economic conditions, political decisions, institutional power, natural events and the actions of other people.
Poseidon represents the storm we cannot argue out of existence.
Athena represents wisdom, friendship, mentorship and those moments when a possible way forward becomes visible.
Thinking symbolically does not require literal belief in the Greek gods. It allows us to recognise an important distinction:
We are responsible for our response, but we are not responsible for everything that happens.
That can be difficult for determined people to accept. We may believe that sufficient effort should allow us to overcome every obstacle.
Sometimes effort changes the situation. Sometimes it does not.
Maturity may consist partly in learning when to row harder, when to change direction, when to accept help and when to stop blaming ourselves for the existence of the sea.
8. Penelope represents another kind of courage
Odysseus receives most of the attention because his courage is visible.
He confronts monsters, storms and death.
Penelope’s courage is quieter. She keeps the household and kingdom from completely falling apart while enduring twenty years of uncertainty. She resists the suitors through patience, intelligence and the famous strategy of weaving by day and secretly unweaving by night.
Her patience is not weakness, and it is not merely waiting.
It is active endurance.
We often celebrate the person who launches something, crosses an ocean, fights a battle or makes a dramatic breakthrough. We are less likely to notice the person who keeps a family, service, organisation, friendship or community functioning through years of difficulty.
Much of civilisation depends on work of this kind.
It is found in caring, administration, teaching, maintaining relationships, keeping records, checking on neighbours and continuing to show up when no dramatic victory is in sight.
Adventure attracts attention. Maintenance makes life possible.
Penelope reminds us that endurance, loyalty and patient intelligence can be every bit as heroic as conquest.
The person who comes home
Perhaps the most useful lesson in The Odyssey is that the purpose of the journey is not simply to survive a succession of ordeals.
The experiences must teach us something.
Odysseus is clever from the beginning, but cleverness alone is not sufficient. He must confront the consequences of pride, the limits of control, the danger of temptation and the costs carried by other people.
He does not arrive home as the man who left.
Neither do we.
At 77, I do not think the aim is to return to the person I once was, whether in Wellington, on the Kāpiti Coast or at an earlier stage of my working life.
The question is whether all those experiences can help me become more useful, more understanding and perhaps a little wiser now.
The storms do not automatically improve us. Hardship can make people bitter, frightened or closed.
But adversity can also deepen judgement and compassion—provided we reflect on it rather than merely endure it.
That may be why a story nearly three thousand years old continues to speak to us.
We all have an Ithaca, even when we cannot name it clearly.
We all meet forces we cannot control.
We all have blind spots.
We all encounter forms of the lotus.
And we all depend upon people whose quiet courage seldom receives the recognition it deserves.
Life is not about avoiding every storm.
It is about becoming the sort of person who can navigate storms without forgetting where home is, who else is in the boat, and why the journey mattered in the first place.
The piece was developed collaboratively, blending Alistair’s lived experience with AI-assisted reflection.