Count no man happy until he’s dead. That's the lesson the people of Thebes want one to absorb at the end of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. (Gee, thanks Sophocles.) I find myself thinking more about this lesson as I ride the whirligig of time past my quarter life crisis. “Happy" as I understand it, is a stand in for Greek that may have meant content, successful, proud etc. I've never embodied any of those attributes in my life, until recently. I failed time and time again, as many of us have, and privilege has enabled me with chance after chance to turn it all around. That's all any of us want to do right? Make a life worth living. One wants to come out of the crucible with something to show for it.
The worm turns once one begins to achieve their goals and reach their dreams. The fruit of success can only go rotten after the harvest. Oedipus, it may come as some surprise, is an innocent. His name has perhaps been irrevocably stained by Freud, but there is much value to found in his story. Oedipus is the hero of Thebes! They love the guy. He's their favorite Sphinx exterminator(or at least ouster). He married the widow queen! The COW industrial saw steady gains. Thebes had a not-cursed King for once. He waltzed his way to the top with nary a scratch. All the while though, he's been walking, unwittingly, the path that will lead to his own downfall. He didn’t know he married his mother. He didn’t know he had killed his father. He didn’t know he was investigating himself for the murder of the previous King. “Tough kittens, buddy, fate’s a bitch”- seems to be the lesson the play, i.e. the gods, is trying to teach Oedipus.
What an audience can learn is that tragedy can be dogging one their whole life and they won’t know it until the hammer falls. Anyone who ever glanced at Greek tragedy knows that they were obsessed with this concept. This is an ingrained lesson that had long past the point of cliche, but nothing quite captures it like our favorite Greek tyrant. What Oedipus Rex does, is use that cliche, and the tragedy within, like weather. Fog surrounds our protagonist, but the audience can see the clouds and hear the thunder. Hitchcock’s bomb and Chekov’s gun have nothing on Sophocles’ oppressive, all-encompassing tension. He doesn't know. He won't know until it's far too late. It already is far too late.
Now, thanks to our old chum Sophocles, I wonder what rugs can be ripped out from under me. By all the dead gods, I hope it's nothing on the scale of Oedipus! Thankfully, I don't live on the same scale as the Theban King. Proportionally, the prospect of life shattering tragedy sends shudders through every human being on Earth. The question being, is the pain any worse the further one falls?
Believe it or not, I actually use this thought process as an uplifting exercise. This past week or so has been a particularly stressful one in my tiny bubble of life. My new-to-me, but not to this world, car caught on fire on the highway. A rotten food incident led to awful food illness and seemed to open the door to a nasty cold. I broke my shower trying to replace the head. Topping off the list, this has all taken place during intense midterms at my new college. It feels like these instances of random cruelty could've broken me and thrown me off the rails in the past. Now, I just have to remind myself of how non-life shattering these instances are. At least I still have my eyes and haven't watched my whole life implode. Count me happy.