Visions of Icarus

visions of Icarus, reflections on risk over stagnancy

Something about that biggest of axial tilts and the longest of summer days that reminds you there’s a fleeting joy of flying close to the sun. Perhaps Icarus had the right idea, though his tale is so often told in foreboding shame. How dare you want to climb so high, how dare you soar above us. The nerve of you wanting more sun than the rest of us, casting us all in your shadow. Had you not considered you don’t deserve this, you shouldn’t feel any better than the rest of us? The notions on you. Shame. 

Except he tried, and he did momentarily fly. And the sun on his face,  while waxed feathers bowed to the destructive force of radiant perfection, must’ve made him feel momentarily like a golden god in the heavens. Should it matter at all the outcome, should you only fear and learn from his plummet and terminally hard landing? Or can you marvel for once at that feeling of soaring so far above the whispers of the nonbelievers.  

There was an idea captured by Icarus, one of beautiful ascendence. A dream realized without the burden of self-doubt. You feel this gently as the sun sets outside your Dublin city flat at 9:57 PM, offering over seventeen hours of daylight this day. You remember the first ‘longest day of your life’ ten years today, standing on a hotel balcony, having cleared your first winter living in Ireland, and in a marveling disbelief at how long a day could be, living your whole life prior in a lower slice of the northern sky.  You marvel the same way you did at your first longest winter day. That first December living abroad, the dark cold ‘welcome’ you could’ve done without in your slow ascent to rebuilding a new career, a new identity, a sunkissed life. And yet, it felt like the right metaphor for starting over, climbing back into the light.  The next decade following was bursting with counterweights, the more long winter nights countered by the long summer days. Two sides of a coin, alternativing it’s melody.

When you’re feeling stuck, the longest of nights feels longer, and the longest day feels undeserved. It’s said the quickest fast acting relief to break out of this doubt and indecision is to visualize. Make a picture in your head of who you are, see it clearly, what values bleed off the page, what colors burst brightest, how you act, and what unwavering charter you’ve set. See it, don’t say it, and you’ll believe it’s you, not just another fleeting story that comes and goes. Paint that picture of your happiest iconic self and poof, you’ve scrubbed away all the grime of consequence, failure, naysaying, and the ‘yeah but what if’s, that tend to keep you stuck. The whispers of cynics and muck dwellers will always remind you of what you are not. The image they have of you is so rarely ever how you see yourself. And you mysteriously find yourself pulled towards those pictures instead of the one you want. You become addicted to the words, the warnings, the collective group-think of safety, modesty, stagnancy. Words become a cancer, and you start to wonder what happened to that picture you adorned so lovingly in your head.  

You imagine a modern day Icarus would piss alot of people off with his Instagram posts. Eye-rolling trolls annoyed with his constant selfies, flying around the sky, secretly wondering if they should be making wings too, how much they cost, will they make them happy? Or is it easier just to tear him down? You’ve read too often about the damage a misleading social media lifestyle can have on others. Too much false confidence, too much happiness competition. Billions of images of every single person’s freeze-framed moment,  their best life, their best self, all congealed into one notion of what everyone should be doing. It would be easy to lose yourself to despair, thinking you’re the only one not flying up by the sun, and the whole world below is full of everyone else’s shadow.  

Except Icarus didn’t care, he didn’t choose his flight to join or to impress.  So you begin to think the solution is neither to accept any responsibility to race after this collective notion of happiness, frantically and at any cost.  Rather, allow everyone else the dreams they hold for themselves, and you make your own image in your own time, on your own terms. But never expect to purchase it, poise for it, filter it, or sustain it. And never let anyone tear it down. Keep it in your mind’s eye, on the wall of your great mind’s palace, and gaze at it in quiet moments when you need that reminder of your one true self. 

Icarus must’ve heard plenty of gossip, plenty of false concerns.  And there was maybe even the most damaging of these whispers inside his own head.  What if I do, what if I don’t.  And then, at some moment, Icarus hushed the noise and found his vision. A painting 30 feet tall of him flying above it all, illuminated with lightness, colored in gold, and frozen in one perfect moment of peace. You remind yourself of this as you go digging for your vision, the one you’ve curated so carefully over so many years. It’s the picture of you on top of a mountain in Africa.  It’s the picture of you ‘blazed up,’ leading a large team event. The one writing feverishly, headphones on at a sunny Parisian cafe. It’s the picture of you on your back effortlessly floating in the sea. You laughing hysterically with your sisters on a white sandy beach.  It’s every hope and every dream that comes about not by listening to words and whispers, but by following your own hand carved identity, the image you cherish of yourself.  

This painting is now 46 feet tall, and growing.  Its bursting colors irradiate the darkness and you barely even remember what dark words kept you from ever believing in yourself.  You’ve taken big swings at this world before, and you’ll do it again. You no longer fear flight, because you see the image of you doing it with such glee. You feel yourself strapping on those wings again, sketching your flight plan. You’ve lingered too long with the worry of consequence, like the fate of the slow boiling frog.  Not you, glory awaits in purposeful, well imagined change. You can see this remedy before you.  A picture of you, mighty and sun-kissed, soaring to your next island, to your next calling. Like Dublin before it, a new place, a new journey, with the sun always overhead, so long as you’re willing to climb above the clouds.