There is a phrase almost everyone has heard, and almost everyone has said to someone else: now you just start over. It is well meant, and it does not help much, because it says nothing about the size of what is left behind. The Odyssey, a poem nearly three thousand years old, answers the same situation more honestly: it says that starting over is hard and generous at the same time, and shows both sides with the text in hand, not with a catchphrase.
The hard side: the price you do not notice paying
The poem leaves no room for doubt about the cost. Odysseus spends twenty years away from home and arrives with a crew of zero men: every companion dies along the way, some by their own error, others by his decision. Before that, he spends seven of those twenty years trapped on an island, with the nymph Calypso, who offers him the easiest way out there is: never grow old, never die, stay there forever. And he refuses.
"I too know all of this, that wise Penelope, compared to you, is lesser in appearance and stature to anyone who looks straight at her: she is mortal, and you are immortal and ageless. But even so I want, and every day I long, to go home and see the day of my return." (Odyssey, Book V, based on the Portuguese translation by Christian Werner, Cosac Naify, 2014)
Notice what he does in this speech: he denies none of the offer's advantages. He concedes everything, and refuses anyway. He does not choose mortal life because it is better. He chooses it because it is his.
The generous side: what is left after the loss
Right after the refusal, the raft he builds with his own hands is destroyed by Poseidon, and he is left with nothing: no boat, no clothes, no companions, no way to say his own name. The poem describes what is left of him with an image worth more than any explanation:
"As when someone hides an ember in the black ash, at the edge of the fields, where there are no other neighbors, and saves the seed of fire so as not to have to light it elsewhere, so Odysseus covered himself with the leaves." (Odyssey, Book V, based on the Portuguese translation by Christian Werner, Cosac Naify, 2014)
This is not the image of a dead man. It is that of a guarded ember, small, but alive, waiting for the moment to become fire again. That is the generous side of the answer: losing everything is not the same as ceasing to exist. Enough is left to start over, even when it does not seem so.
Naked, on a beach, asking a stranger for help
The scene that follows is the most concrete portrait of a fresh start in the whole poem. Odysseus wakes up in the land of the Phaeacians not knowing where he is, with nothing but his own body, and finds Nausicaa, the king's daughter, who had gone with her maids to wash clothes by the river and was now laying the garments out on the rocks of the beach.
Notice what he does, because it is the first visible act of rebuilding in his whole story: he does not attack, does not beg on his knees, does not invent a grand story to impress her. He speaks. He calculates that getting too close would frighten her, so he speaks from a distance, compares her to a goddess, and asks for the least he can: clothes and directions to the city (Odyssey, Book VI, 141-148). He rebuilds himself through speech, because it is the only tool he has left, and it is enough.
For anyone who thinks they started too late
If there is anyone who thinks they missed the right time to start something over, it is worth knowing what material the Odyssey works this doubt with: the most celebrated hero of antiquity starts over already a mature man, from absolute zero, naked on a beach, asking a girl washing clothes for help. The poem does not treat this scene as failure. It treats it as the exact beginning of the return.
It is not a promise that it will be easy, and the Odyssey itself refuses to make that promise. It is a more solid statement: it takes time, people are lost, you do not come back the same, and even so there is a way back. What sustains that way, from beginning to end of the poem, is not strength. It is the desire to return, combined with the intelligence to find a way.
What the poem does not do
It is also worth noting what the Odyssey avoids saying, because that is part of the answer. At no point does the poem promise that starting over will heal the pain or erase what was lost. Odysseus arrives home twenty years older, without the companions who set out with him, and the text does not pretend that account balances out. What it offers is not easy comfort, it is a fair proportion between the size of the loss and the size of what can still be built afterward. It is that proportion, kept from beginning to end, that makes the Odyssey a more serious answer than the catchphrase it replaces.
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What does the Odyssey teach about starting over after losing everything?
That starting over takes time, hurts, and demands losses that never come back: Odysseus returns home twenty years later, with a crew of zero men. But the poem also insists that what makes someone who they are is not strength, it is the desire to return combined with the intelligence to find a way.
Why does Odysseus refuse the immortality that Calypso offers?
Because immortality would cost him the very life he wants to live: growing old with Penelope, on a small, rocky island, knowing he will die one day. He chooses mortal life, with time running out, over an eternity with no one left to recognize him.
Is it true that Odysseus starts over from zero, naked, on a beach?
Yes. After Poseidon destroys the raft on which he leaves Calypso's island, Odysseus reaches the land of the Phaeacians with no boat, no clothes, and no way to say his own name. It is in that state that he asks Nausicaa, who had gone to wash clothes by the river, for help, and starts over by speaking.
Continue: Odysseus and Calypso: Book V · Which translation of the Odyssey to read? · The Odyssey, by Homer: summary and analysis · A culture that accuses and does not absolve
Source class: Odisseia, de Homero