Icarus

Ever heard of Icarus?

Of course you have. It’s the famous story; Icarus makes wings out of wax, dad says don’t fly too close to the sun, your wings will burn. Don’t fly too close to the water, they’ll get wet and drag you down. Icarus flew too high and he drowned.

We heard this story in preschool before we knew what dying was. A few years later we understood, at least, that it was tragic. Our parents quoted it, our teachers read it during naptime, we found paintings and murals and music and books and poems and everyone famous enough to have a wikipedia page has a quote about it. It’s everywhere.

And the things about Icarus isn’t that it’s a sad story. There are a lot of sad stories out there, but only one Icarus. It’s a universal story because it’s a cautionary tale. It says it right there at the beginning: Don’t fly too high, don’t fly too low. Icarus ignored that and he died.

So let’s forget the greeks and visit right now. 2500 years later, we’re still quoting this story. Why?

We tell our kids, ‘Fly high. Be ambitious. The sky’s the limit. Well, more accurately the sun, but what you should worry about is the water. Don’t fly too low. Don’t fly too low, don’t screw it up, don’t fail this one simple thing.’ And what did the kids do? For the most part we listened. We ignored the sun, because unlike the greeks, we know that it’s too far away to melt our wings. We know that it won’t hurt us as long as we stay in the atmosphere.

So we look out the window of that tower and we jump. And for a few years, we’re flying, and we can’t see the sun or the water. And our parents are cheering us on and we think, ‘I’ll go just a bit higher. Just until I can see the sun.’

So we do. We work harder. We apply for that internship, we ace that test, we start wearing headbands so the halos have a place to go when they get here. And we’re sprinting through our lives and flying higher and higher and the sun’s still nowhere to be found.

And then something happens. Maybe the wind got a little faster, and we flew higher to avoid it. Maybe we saw someone else above us and we raced to get there. Maybe someone told us the view was better above the clouds. Whatever the reason we move too high, and then there’s the sun, right in front of us.

And we think, ‘Okay, I know the story. I’ll stay right here. I won’t go any higher and I’ll be safe.’

Fast forward to somewhere around sixteen. Halfway through highschool, starting your first job. Things are getting worse. You’ve got tests you’re not ready for no matter how long you study, parents that want you moving faster than ever, a social life that you’re somehow supposed to maintain. And things are piling up and you don’t know what you’re doing but it’s just Junior year it can’t be that hard. You’re not even old enough to have senioritis yet.

So you push yourself and you move faster and you forget about the sun because surely you won’t be this high for long. Surely you’ll back down eventually.

But you don’t. The year moves on and you’re staring at the sun and you dare it to set you ablaze because how could it? It’s miles away. And you work harder at your job and you study non–stop and those perfect grades you had for years are slipping but you won’t let them get that far because you have wings and you’re going to fly and the sun can’t hurt you if you close your eyes.

And what does it get you? Minimum wage and mediocre grades. It gets you disappointed teachers and frustrated parents. It gets you enough money for vape but not therapy. It gets you everything you never needed and takes everything you did.

And eventually something breaks. And those wings are melting, the wax is dripping off the feathers are peeling away and you look at the sun one more time and you see it for what it is, finally. But it’s too late and you fall.

And you wonder how everyone else could get this high without dropping but what you forgot, what everyone forgot, is that depending on what time of day you jumped off that tower the sun is higher or lower in the sky, and depending on the rain the ocean is rising or falling, and none of us are in the sky long enough to see these changes and even if we were we wouldn’t notice because we’d be too busy staring ahead at the horizon wondering what was next. And maybe that's the important thing here, or maybe it isn’t.

Maybe the real question we should isn’t why we tell the story of Icarus. It’s how. How did we tell our children not to fly too high right before warning them not to fall? Maybe the real story of Icarus wasn’t a naive child who flew into the sun out of his ambition; maybe it was the story of a scared kid following his father’s lead, trying to escape a desperate situation. And he’s trying to listen to the rules but Daedalus is right behind him screaming fly faster or we’ll never make it. And he does, and he falls, and we close the storybook.

But none of this matters to you as you’re falling. As the wind you were riding stings your face and rips your skin. As the journey back down happens so much faster than the journey up. As you hit the water and sink under.

And someone finds you, eventually. Someone finds you and wonders how you managed to mess up a few simple instructions, because all they can see is someone who flew to close to the water and then gave up. They don’t see the flight, but they remember the fall.

You don’t see any of it. You see the water, and the waves, and finally the sun in the sky. And in your last moments you look up at that star and you think to yourself, ‘It’s just light. It couldn’t have hurt me. Maybe I broke the wings myself.’