Spoiler alert: This essay contains mild spoilers for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026). That said, if you're familiar with the broad strokes of Homer's Odyssey, there shouldn't be too many surprises.
Growth is the slow process of watching capacity catch up to desire. We know what we want long before we (ever) become the kind of person who can fully receive it. But no matter how much we desire to be that person, life insists that we build them slowly and often painfully.
There’s so much discourse about Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. One of the biggest critiques was how Matt Damon’s Odysseus lacked the deeply complicated, flawed humanity that defines Homer's hero—a man whose greatest strength was matched only by his susceptibility to temptation, pride, and desire. Nolan's Odysseus, by contrast, is riddled with anxiety, guilt, and the quiet burden of everything he's survived: the pillaging and the bloodshed and the moral compromises. (Even Athena was washed with Odysseus's guilt—Zendaya wearing that same haunted, thousand-yard stare like Rue did) He’s seen too much. And once you've seen enough of the world, there are some versions of yourself you just cannot return to. For nearly three hours, we watch a man carrying the unbearable weight of his memory. Every decision is filtered through grief, every silence through guilt. He isn't merely trying to find his way home; he's trying to reconcile with the person the journey has made him.
(I mean, this is a metaphor for the decline of the American empire through and through. That's an essay in its own right—and one of the film's most compelling through lines—but this is about who the journey required Odysseus to become before he could return back to Anne!!!! I mean Penelope.)
I have not read The Odyssey in its entirety (though a copy of Emily Wilson’s translation is on its way to me as we speak) but I was less interested in whether Nolan faithfully adapted Homer than in what his film suggested about becoming. Because I don’t think The Odyssey is ultimately a story about getting home. This is an aDaPtAtIoN after all. And Nolan had something to say about becoming!
We spend so much of our lives believing we’re meant to “find ourselves,” as though our truest identity already exists somewhere beneath the surface waiting to be uncovered. It is one of modern life’s most seductive myths—and one that extends far beyond the astrology charts, Human Design readings, personality tests, and every other framework promising to tell us who we’re meant to be.
That may be only a fraction of the story. Which is probably why I have not spoken to my astrologer in over a year lol.
The world, with all its horror and confusion and unfairness and grit, has a way of proving otherwise. I just really love the idea that a very specific version of us has to exist before we can actually experience the life we dream of living. Not because we’re being punished or tested, but because some dreams ask something of us before they can become ours. They demand a certain depth, discernment, resilience, generosity, or courage that only experience can cultivate.
That horrific, body-altering breakup (my friend and I joke that the period I was my thinnest was “body-by-Kevin” LOL). The friendship that shattered your understanding of loyalty. The job you didn't get. The job you did get that made you hate your life. The city you reluctantly left. The class you took on a whim. None of these moments are random interruptions to your life before you self-actualize. They are the raw materials from which your future self is built. Every one of them expands your capacity in ways you rarely recognize in real time. The evidence isn't that your life changes. It's that one day you respond differently than you once would have.
It's funny because I don't actually think my dreams have changed all that much over the last decade. If I’m being honest, I've always wanted to write. I've always wanted to love deeply. I've always wanted a beautiful home, thoughtful work, autonomy, a small inner circle, and beautiful dinners. The dreams stayed remarkably consistent. What changed was my capacity to inhabit them.
Along the way, you shed people, places, and versions of yourself that once felt impossible to imagine living without. You react differently. Things that once would have devastated you barely register. Then, almost imperceptibly, they stop carrying the same weight they once did.
I didn’t ask to never speak to some people ever again. I didn’t know certain chapters would end when they did—or that some would end in ways that would humiliate me. I certainly didn’t know I’d spend years reconciling with my work in what feels like 9930207 different ways. But that’s just the way becoming works. Not everyone who helps make you is meant to meet the person you become.
Nolan offers no triumphant homecoming. By the time Odysseus returns to Ithaca, the man who sailed for Troy no longer exists. His birthright may have made him king, but the journey made him question whether he could ever rule again.
This philosophy isn’t “get your fucking ass up and work.” It’s “become someone who can sustain what you want.” Those are two very different pursuits. Because almost anyone can receive something wonderful. Very few people are prepared to keep it.
The person you're meant to be isn't hidden behind some immutable core waiting to be uncovered. She emerges through every experience that deepens your capacity for the life you hoped to live. I'm still becoming her, day by day.
“Because almost anyone can receive something wonderful. Very few people are prepared to keep it.” Oooooooooh. Ok much to think about