Growing up in China, my childhood was filled with our own creation myths— Pangu separating heaven and earth, Nuwa mending the sky, and Journey to the West/Monkey King.
So when I watched The Odyssey recently, I initially expected a story framed by foreign, unfamiliar mythology. Instead, I was struck by how deeply it mirror our own. Across every culture and era, mythologies seem to converge on a single, quiet truth: the vastness of the cosmos, the fragility & the power of the humans, and the inevitable inward journey of one’s own.
When we are young, our ambitions point outward. We dream of conquering the world, and proving ourselves. But as we grow, at some point, we go back to the most fundamental basics of living. We realize that true belonging was never a destination waiting for us across the sea; it is an internal myth we must build within ourselves. (That is why for me, the most powerful scene in the story is when Odysseus finally stops fighting the ocean and simply surrenders to it.)
I watched the story unfold first with a friend, then alone. What resonates the most is how uncomfortably familiar Odysseus’s struggle feels. Thousands of years ago, someone sat down and wrote the precise internal chaos we face today: desire, fear, the ache for freedom, and the terror of losing control.
Same old.
On paper, Odysseus just wants to return to Ithaca. But "home" is rarely a place. It's who you are when life strips away everything you hide behind. Before you can get back to yourself, you usually have to watch your carefully constructed life fall apart a little. You lose your tribe, your identity, and the neat stories you told yourself about who you were supposed to be.
We love to posture as heroes—patient, rational, brave. But life happens when you're forced to sit in the dark with the parts of yourself you’d rather ignore: The fact that we carry inner demons. We get jealous. We snap at the people we love. We pick short-term pleasure over long-term peace. We try to control everything because, underneath the dominance, we're secretly afraid.
The monsters Odysseus encounters are not external beasts; they are the everyday traps of human nature:
The Cyclops is the raw, reactive rage that surges when we feel small and threatened.
Circe turns men into pigs—a reminder of how much humanity is left if we give into instant gratification.
The Sirens offer seductive nostalgia. Odysseus ties himself to the mast because his rational self knows his future self can't be trusted.
Calypso offers easy comfort—painlessness and total safety. But Odysseus sits on the shore and cries every day, because he has a home in his heart.
No matter how much courage we have, perhaps, we’ll still listen to the Sirens. We’ll still want to hide in Calypso’s cave. We’ll still mess up out of sheer pride. But homecoming is never about shrinking back into the innocent, unbruised person you were before life got to you.
It’s the quiet courage to make a life after you’ve been thoroughly humbled—carrying your mistakes, your fears, and your scars right along with you, and surrendering in the
And you make it a home.