The Fall of Icarus

On the island of Crete during the age of King Minos, there lived a man named Daedalus and his young son Icarus. Among all those mortals who grew so wise that they learned the secrets of the gods, none was more cunning than Daedalus.

Daedalus was just like any other ordinary mortal, except he was blessed with one special talent; his prowess as an inventor of strange and wonderful mechanical creations.

Seeking to escape exile from the island of Crete, Daedalus looked to the heavens as the only route open to him and his son.

At length, watching the sea gulls in the air – the only creatures that were assured of liberty – he thought of a plan for himself and Icarus, who was held captive with him.

Little by little, he gathered a store of feathers, great and small. He fastened these together with thread, moulded them in with wax, and so fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. He taught the boy Icarus carefully on how to use them, bidding him beware of rash adventures among the stars.

Before taking flight, Daedalus warned his son:

“Never to fly too low or too high, for the fogs about the earth would weigh you down, but the blaze of the sun will surely melt your feathers apart if you go too near.”

For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the other. After all, who could remember to be careful when he was to fly for the first time? Are birds careful? Not they! And not an idea remained in the boy’s head but the one joy of escape.

With these wings, up they rose; the boy after the father. The hateful ground of Crete sank beneath them; and the country folk, who caught a glimpse of them when they were high above the treetops.

At first, there was terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them, a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained – like a halcyon bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother – he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over. He saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him that was his father Daedalus.

He longed for one draft of flight to quench the endless thirst from his captivity. He stretched out his arms to the sky and made toward the highest of heavens, ignoring the fainting shouts of his father.

As the heavens he soared high, warmer and warmer the air grew. Those arms, that had seemed to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, dropped. He fluttered his young hands vainly as he fell.

And in that terror, he remembered.

The heat of the sun had melted the wax from his wings; the feathers were falling, one by one, like snowflakes; and there was none to help.

As Daedalus watched in horror, Icarus plunged toward the sea, frantically flapping the gentle wafting feathers that held him in flight. He fell like a leaf tossed down by the wind, with one cry that overtook Daedalus far away.

When he finally hit the water, there was not a feather left attached. Daedalus returned and sought high and low for the poor boy, but he saw nothing but the birdlike feathers afloat on the water.

At that moment, he knew Icarus drowned and he was swallowed by the swelling seas.

Daedalus landed as quickly as he could on the beach near where Icarus had fallen, but the only sign of his poor child was a few feathers floating in the waves. Daedalus crumpled to the sand, his face in his hands, for he knew his son was dead.

After many months, when Daedalus began to recover from his grief, the nearest island he named Icaria, in memory of the child. In heavy grief, he went to the temple of Apollo in Sicily and there, he hung up his wings as an offering.

Vowing never to fly again.

I was reminded of this story after listening to one of Hamilton’s musical scores, Hamilton is Icarus. Elizabeth Schuyler referenced her sister Angelica’s remark of her husband Hamilton as her “marrying an Icarus, who has flown too close to the Sun”.

There are many lessons to take from this myth. Despite being thousands of years old, the moral of the story is still relevant to this day:

Aim for the middle course and avoid extremes. In other words, be balanced, for balance is indeed the key to our existence.

The myth teaches us a valuable lesson about finding balance to all aspects of our life: physical, mental, financial, social, emotional and spiritual but most importantly, between your ego and your gifts.

We all have, and are given, wings to fly on and it is our choice on what to do with them.

Do we not use them and never take flight?

Do we accept them as they are and fly proudly on them to new destinations?

Or do we misuse them, flying too high, too close to the Sun, destroying our gift and ourselves in the process?

If you refuse to fly, or you try to fly too high like Icarus did, you will find yourself falling into the depths of emotional despair, drowning in your own ego (as represented by the sea Icarus drowned in).

The moral of the myth warns against the needless search of instant satisfaction, in a way underlying the Greek philosophy of sophrosyne, which stands for healthy-mindedness, implying self-control guided by knowledge and balance.

It was Icarus’ choice not to accept his gift as it was and to see it as enough. Instead, he chose to push it further, to a place where both his gift and himself was destroyed in the process.

To make the most of your gifts, you do not need to make yourself into more than you are. You do not need to fly higher than you can and burn yourself, but you also do not need to stay down on earth, cutting or denying your own wings to fly.

You are enough.

In the end, the fall of Icarus teaches its readers that you have power over what you do with your gifts, and to what heights and destinations they take you.