It's all Greek to me.

Aug 31, 2025

You have got to love the Greeks.

Hummus. Kebabs. They do a good salad. They pretty much invented Theatre, and Philosophy, and Democracy (not that anyone seems to care much about that anymore). And while they were doing all that, they also managed to pull together the Olympic Games.

Even their old stories are good. You have the Iliad and the Odyssey, Theseus and his pet Minotaur. And OK, admittedly, they have Leda and the Swan - which is the Scrappy Doo of all stories - but they more than make up for it with the story of Icarus - the boy who flew too close to the sun.

If you don’t know the story, then I guess you didn’t go to school in Cumbernauld in the 1970s, when it was all the rage. Basically, there’s a guy called Daedalus who is imprisoned in Crete with his son Icarus. Daedalus, being a smartypants, manages to make wings out of feathers and wax that allow him to fly, so they can make their escape. He gives Icarus a shot of the wings, and the scamp - despite warnings from his Dad about not flying too high or too low - gets all overenthusiastic, flies higher and higher until he is too close to the sun. Then, the heat from the sun melts the wax, and the wings fall apart, and Icarus plunges into the sea and drowns. And Daedalus stays imprisoned in Crete. The end. (The Greeks weren’t that fond of the ‘Happily Ever After’ construction for story making)

At school, we learned that it was a story reminding you not to get too big for your boots and to not be overambitious (because there’s nothing quite as inspiring to young minds as the reminder that having big dreams will lead to certain death). But even as a kid, I was certain it was about something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

For example, I thought my next-door neighbor was the same as Icarus - which if I’d told anyone, they would have howled with laughter at me. For Icarus is depicted as a young boy with angel wings soaring high in an azure blue sky, whereas my neighbor was an angry, fat bloke in bad knitwear, who smelt of cigarettes, and pub carpets, and laundry that had stayed damp in the machine for too long. I definitely didn’t like this neighbor, but I didn’t reckon I’d like Icarus either.

At that time in Scotland, the pubs closed at 11pm, and pretty much every night at around 11.30, in my bedroom on the top floor of the house, I’d wake to the sound of the neighbor navigating his way back home. He’d be fighting invisible friends or singing songs the way only drunks can - where the lyrics have no consonants and only vowels, and the melody is only sort of recognisable through the call of despair. Eventually, he’d find the door to his house and, swearing and muttering, over the jangling of keys, make his way in.

He fell down plenty of times, though not from the sky. And obviously not into the sea - though in some ways he still drowned. But I thought he was like Icarus because he didn’t seem to be living in the same world as anyone else. And though his wife used to yell at him, he didn’t ever seem to be able to hear her.

Looking back now, I see that when I was a kid, I recognised the story of Icarus as one about addiction - even though I had no idea at the time what addiction actually meant.

I don’t know when it was decided that the Icarus story should be offered up instead as a warning about the dangers of being overambitious. I guess we have plenty of centuries to choose from, where we’ve been governed by a small group of people who own everything and need to keep reminding us that we should know our place and not complain.

Anyhoos, sitting on my fat one for the past few weeks, I have had no choice but to let my mind wander - along with, thankfully, my legs. I am under medical instructions to walk at least a mile every day, but absolutely not to exercise. The walking bit is awesome - though there’s nothing like walking for a bit of thinking - but the rest of the time, ‘patiently’ recovering, can go suck it.

And here’s the rub. When I am medically allowed to exercise, I never want to. And now that I can’t exercise, it’s all that I want to do. (Where’s your actual mythological parable about that, ancient Greeks?)

So I distract myself by doing the worst thing possible: I scroll on my phone.

And though I might pick up a couple of recipes or learn a new trick about how to declutter, before too long, I find myself drowning in sadness about the state of the world. And the future. And frustrated by posts from idiots who willfully wish to just annoy people. And I find myself thinking I am Icarus, because even though I’ve been warned no good will come from it, I do it anyway.

I do it because I’m bored, or because I’m waiting and I can’t work out what to do with the next five minutes, or because I am trying to escape from myself.

Is my doom scrolling an addiction? No. But it’s a habit I definitely want to break. Because the best way to have your life is to be in it.

You know, I’m no ancient Greek, but I figure that whole story could have gone in an entirely different direction if, instead of just telling his son not to fly too high or too low, Daedalus could have explained that the greatest skill is in navigating highs and lows. And if both of them had agreed, that though building a pair of wings with wax and feathers is hard, working out how to use them properly is much harder.

And then maybe the story could have ended with them living happily ever after. But then again, the Ancient Greeks weren’t very much fans of that.

PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, an Ancient Greek invents some new magic thing. That’s a lie, obviously, but it does wonders for my algorithm, and I am incredibly grateful. xo

P. P. S: If you enjoy talking/listening/stories/ random facts, come and join me and Mr Tweddle this Wednesday at Fish and Bear. This Wednesday, we will be at MacLeod’s in the Magical No-Kings-dom of Van Nuys. xo