Icarus Had the Right Idea. Aim for the Sun.
Most people learn about the fate of Icarus at a young age. It serves as a powerful warning of the perils of excessive self-confidence, how one should avoid extreme risks because of their potentially grave conscequences.
The crux of this story has even passed into our lexicon as a euphemism for over-reaching ambition or greed. I’ve often heard it said, in a slightly smug way, that someone has “flown too close to the sun” if their ventures have sadly failed, as if they should have heeded the story of Icarus and known better than to try.
The story of Icarus is a tale of a father, Daedalus, and his son, Icarus, who are exiled on Crete, unable to escape by means of sea or land. In a final bid to escape, Daedalus crafts imitation bird’s wings out of feathers, fastened with thread and bees wax which he affixes to their arms, allowing them to fly away from the island like birds into the sky.
Before their flight, he gives his son firm instructions regarding the course he should take on this flight of escape, warning that Icarus must stay clear of the moisture of the sea at low levels as well as the heat of the sun and many constellations of stars at high altitude.
‘Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. Travel between the extremes. And I order you not to aim towards Bootes, the Herdsman, or Helice, the Great Bear, or towards the drawn sword of Orion: take the course I show you!’
And so they fly out like birds, with wings upon their shoulders, flying as if they were gods travelling into the sky. Upon sheer excitement at the freedom of the sky, Icarus soars higher and higher in his daring flight, abandoning his father, flying closer and closer to the sun, until it’s heat softens the fragrant wax that holds the wings in place. Eventually, the wax melts, the feathers loosen and fall, leaving the boy to flail his bare arms in vain, only to plunge to his death in the deep Icarian Sea, which is thereafter named in his honour.
It’s a very sad story of a father losing a son, after his advice is roundly ignored, and everyone suffers as a consequence. It’s easy to interpret this story as a warning against over-reaching ourselves, that we should always maintain a realistic set of parameters in any endeavour we might undertake.
Yet, there’s more to the story than that. Upon consideration, I begin to feel the story is like middle class propaganda, a conspiracy to try and keep peoples heads down. Because it also serves up a warning that we shouldn’t do anything particularly good or bad, just stick to the middle ground and everything will be OK.
It creates a fantastically cautionary piece of advice for parents to pass on to children, that walking outside of the boundaries of safety has fatal conscequences. Don’t take risks, keep your head down, fly low and keep out of danger. This is not advice that anyone seeking to create a sense of self-fulfillment should ever follow, they should be doing the opposite, taking risks, following their heart and being their own person.
Looking at the story in the context of life’s endeavours, flying close to the sun can be a spectacularly good thing. It’s important to take risks, to dive in at the deep end and ignore what people tell you to do. George Bernard Shaw once said that all progress relies on people being unreasonable, that being reasonable will get us nowhere. Flying close to the sun and pushing the boundaries of what people say we can do is exactly where the future of human endeavour lies. Sometimes, when you fly close to the sun, your wax doesn’t melt and from that position, you get the most spectacular view of the world.
The Icaraian Sea was named after the boy whose life it claimed and that dedication seems incredibly appropriate, for we often name things after heroes, role models or people of great standing. What Icarus was doing was not outrageous, or wild, it was human nature, trying to propel himself further than his forebears. We should all look at his example and start flying closer to the sun, every day.
Sadly, Icarus paid the ultimate price for his efforts, he suffered for his desire to reach new heights. His story is tragic, it was a rare case in which life or death pivoted on the fragile wings upon his shoulders. But mythical stories are never going to be average, or take the middle ground like Daedalus advised, it is their job to be extreme examples, to show the broad depths and heights of human existence, in this case, tragedy. For those of us living life outside of Greek mythology, in 21st century society, it’s unusual to encounter a situation with such grave consequences, and when we do, we instinctively act with caution.
However, for the remaining 99.999% of my life which is not a life or death situation, or a vignette of literary tragedy, nor a place where the imposing spectre of an untimely fate is present, Icarus will serve as an idol to me, someone to be revered. He was a boy who took wise, sage and reasoned advice, then utterly ignored every word of it, in the hope of soaring higher than anyone ever had before.
And that, my friends, is precisely why Icarus is my hero. His pure hope and unalloyed joy at the freedom of flight led him to seek new heights that no-one else had ever reached. That desire should never be sullied or repressed, but nurtured and allowed free within every single one of us.
Every time we face a challenge in life, every time we have a choice between the glorious freedom of flight, a chance to soar above the world, or to toe the line and stick to the middle ground, we need to think of Icarus, strap our wings on, and head straight for the sun.
