The Things That Govern Us

Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply

Reading: The Great Conversation, Vol 4 · The Iliad of Homer— Book VI

Every so often you watch someone make a decision that makes no sense.

Not because they are confused.
Not because they lack information.
Not because nobody has explained the consequences.
In fact, the consequences may be obvious to everyone involved.

Including them.

Someone says:
“This is costing you too much.”
And the other person says:
“I know.”

Then nothing changes.

We are not reading Homer to learn about ancient Greece. We are reading Homer because everything changes and nothing changes.
The clothes change. The technology changes. The language changes. Yet the deepest parts of being human remain stubbornly familiar.
The moment that stopped me in Book VI is not an ancient Greek moment.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon moment.

A husband and wife standing in a kitchen.
A parent and child.
A founder and spouse.

In Book VI, Hector returns briefly from the fighting and finds his wife, Andromache, and their young son.
Andromache begs him not to go back. And she is not speaking from fear alone. She has already watched war take her father, her mother, and her brothers.

She knows what is coming.
What struck me is that Hector knows too.
At one point he imagines the future as clearly as she does.
“May I lie dead beneath the barrow. . . ere I hear you cry as they carry you into bondage.”

He can see it.
He can hear it.
He knows exactly what she fears.

Then Homer gives us one of the most tender scenes.

Their son is frightened by Hector’s helmet.
They laugh.
Andromache smiles through her tears.
Hector takes his son into his arms.
And as he watches them, his heart yearns.

For a moment, everything that matters is standing together.

Love.
Family.
Home.
The life he is fighting to protect.

And then he sends her away.

She leaves for the house, weeping bitterly and often looking back at him.

He stays.
Knowing.

Hector’s tragedy is not that he does not love them enough.
It is that love is not the rule he is living under.

That is the moment that would not leave me.

Hector’s tragedy is not that he does not love them enough.
Love is not the rule he is living under.

That is an uncomfortable thing to recognise.

Because we want love to be enough.

We want understanding to be enough.

We want evidence to be enough.

We want the person to see what is obvious to everyone around them and change course.

Yet many of the most consequential decisions in life are governed by something else.

Sometimes it is honour.

Sometimes duty.

Sometimes loyalty.

Sometimes identity.

Sometimes a promise.

Sometimes an idea of who we must be.

The people who love us can often see the cost clearly.

Sometimes we can see the cost ourselves.

That’s what makes these moments so painful.
The argument is not happening between knowledge and ignorance.
It is not happening between love and indifference.

Everyone understands.
Everyone cares.
Yet the outcome remains unchanged.
Because the decision is being made somewhere else.

Perhaps that is why the great books survive.
Not because they tell us how people once lived.
But because they keep exposing things that have not changed at all.

Which is why the conversation keeps happening.

“This is costing you too much.”

“I know.”

And nothing changes.

What are you unwilling to betray, even though the cost is clear?

Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply.

This essay is part of the Conversations reading journey.