The Impact of Stories
The ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey, attributed to Homer, is one of the oldest surviving works of literature (estimated to have been written in the 8th or 7th century BCE). It’s still popular today—in fact, a current You Tube/social media sensation is proof. Musician Jorge Rivera-Herrans created EPIC: The Musical, a sung-through adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey that has amassed widespread critical and popular acclaim.
My daughters are two fans of the musical (making me one, too!), so much so that on our recent trip to Greece, they insisted we visit Ithaca, the island home of Odysseus, the place to which he struggled to return after the ten-year Trojan War. On the island are the ruins of a castle that archaeologists believe could have been the home of the legendary Greek king of Ithaca.
We made the (ahem) odyssey, and the 3,000+ year-old ruins were breathtaking to see. But what made them remarkable was their (alleged) connection to the story. We saw a lot of ancient sites on our trip; they were all beautiful, but this one location rose above the rest because of its very long, storied, bond to something we still talk about today.
That’s the power of story.
That’s the power of what you do when you write.
So keep writing.