The charmed life

You residents of Thebes, our native land, look on this man, this Oedipus, the one who understood that celebrated riddle. He was the most powerful of men. All citizens who witnessed this man’s wealth were envious. Now what a surging tide of terrible disaster sweeps around him. So while we wait to see that final day, we cannot call a mortal being happy before he’s passed beyond life free from pain. (from the final lines chanted by the chorus in Oedipus the King by Sophocles)

Oedipus the king had it going his way from birth, literally. He was supposed to have been discarded on the cliffs of the countryside. He survived that because of the kindness of a shepherd. Lucky for Oedipus, the shepherd delivered him to a king's household for raising in a not too distant city-state from where he entered the world. And, still lucky for him, he became a great king in his own hometown city-state by solving a riddle. Yes, the stars shone on Oedipus. His wife and children were beautiful and loyal. His subjects admired him. He lived what you might call the charmed life.

But, life is long. At least it was long enough for Oedipus' fortune to change. Unlucky for him, he had been born under a terrible prophecy. He was caught in a spiral finally in which he slept with his mother and killed his father, the cursed prophecy given at his birth. Really unlucky for him, he lost Apollos' favor. He gouged out both his eyes for penance and then was banished from the town he ruled for fulfilling his prophecy.

Life's full of ironies and illusions. Life is full of disillusions for that matter. That's what the closing words of the play by Sophocles relay to us. I guess around 425 BCE, people just like you and me, looked at life and thought that some people lived charmed lives. I know we look out at the country club tennis courts and wish we had the life of leisure like those people. Or we are driving down the street and see those Porshes and Mercedes and fantasize about the life those people are living, wishing we had it for ourselves. We like to drive through the really "nice" sections of town and wish we had a piece of that American Pie. Sometimes we even think we're headed toward the good life we deserve and then a setback occurs. We think that the people driving those Mercedes, living in those nice houses or playing tennis on the courts while the rest of the world is working don't have any setbacks. Their lives are charmed.

Perhaps, the great teacher summed up what the Greeks mused about as they left Sophocles' play in the statement, "The first shall be last, and the last first." But I do like the elaboration of Sophocles. One of the translations of this passage of Oedipus uses regret instead of pain from life's circumstances. In that case, it could be paraphrased that a person should not count him(her)self fortunate by having a life of no regrets until the day (s)he dies. Only then would you have no allowance for regretful times. Either way, you have to die before you know for sure that you've made it through life unscathed.

No one does of course, that is, go through life unscathed. People divorce, get betrayed, lose someone near to them, have recalcitrant children, become disillusioned, lose large sums of money, have businesses go under, get cast out of their families, and much more. Really, that is the point of the play as voiced by the chorus. It is great use of hyperbole, a form of irony.

So, if the Apollos-worshiping community of BCE times recognized the way of the world, and human nature hasn't changed since then, why would we have an expectation in our modern world that we would go through life unscathed? That's why I am banking on the last being first. There are a lot of us who are running last right now. I look forward to coming in first at the end.