Lessons from Odysseus as we confront the monsters of complacency and despair

In a world where we often have to face our monsters, we need to tap into our incredible inner power so that we can make a difference – not only in our own lives but in the lives of others, too.

Jon Foster-Pedley is associate Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Reading and dean and director of Henley Business School Africa.

Odysseus, who, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, is back on the silver screen, famously had to navigate between two sea monsters, the six-headed Scylla with her 12 feet, and Charybdis, the voracious whirlpool, on his return from fighting in Troy.

To avoid one meant sailing perilously close to the other. His first passage cost him the lives of six of his crew, who were captured off his ship and eaten. The second time Odysseus had to cling to a tree while his raft went into the whirlpool, only for it to be spat out and sent back to him when the monster discovered it was empty.

We all have our own Scylla and Charybdis to face, and they are as potentially devastating – despondency and complacency. As our lives progress, and if we have achieved what we set out to, we can become comfortable and get sucked into the whirlpool of complacency.

Equally, if we are still hustling but failing to make our mark, to have our voices heard and our achievements seen, we can be minced up in the machine and become totally despondent. That’s just in our personal lives – there’s plenty in the outside world to drag the most rational of us all down with the four horsemen of the modern apocalypse: planet extinction, identity politics, war, and greed – all around us at home and abroad.

We don’t have to be subsumed by despondency and despair, and we certainly shouldn’t allow ourselves to be cosseted by our complacency either, because that can often be a Trojan horse in our consciousness. We must tap into the incredible power that we all have to make a difference, in our own lives and in the lives of others. I saw this again recently at our mid-year graduation ceremony, capping graduates in our executive education programmes.

They are not in their early 20s like the typical student demographic – they are in their mid-30s and 40s. They are seasoned adults who have been tested by life, who have built up hard-won experience in the workplace. They have power. They have energy, and now, hopefully, they have the tools to harness that power more efficiently and effectively as they venture forth.

We need to remember, as we gather over the braai fires and try to make sense of the various commissions of inquiry and their litanies of institutional failure and low-level insurrection, that giving in is precisely what best suits the architects of this chaos, because by complaining and moaning, we dissipate all our energy and give up instead of organising and fighting back.

Lee Kuan Yew , the father of modern Singapore, was ruthlessly pragmatic in his pursuit of a better life for his fellow citizens through his vision for a modern city-state. The moment we allow ourselves to let go of our dream, we allow a change in our standards and capabilities.