So I met Thucydides

There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write

When you’re staring down the barrel of potential job loss you find yourself doing some funny things. Not like Kumail Nanjiani funny (How cool would that be?!) but more like out of character. Ish.

Not out of character enough to start eating snails but enough to have a conversation with Claude about what I could do with my 20 years of experience to make something that resembles a living if they decide to can me.

The direction this went in was not exactly weird but it was definitely unexpected. Claude suggested I read “The History of the Peloponnesian War” by, yes, Thucydides.

I’m more of a Dr. Seuss person myself so a 500-page book written between 431 BCE and 411 BCE by an Athenian general was not at the top of my reading list. Or the middle. Or the bottom. Honestly, if you’d asked me, I would have said that of all the books ever written, this was one of them.

The Parthenon because apparently I do ancient Greek stuff now. Who knew?Photo by Josh Stewart on Unsplash

But I read one section of it called the “Melian Dialogue”, at Claude’s suggestion. It’s about six pages long. I figured I could handle six pages. It’s a dialogue (duh) between Athenian delegates who go to Melos to take over the island. Melos had aligned itself with Sparta in the war with Athens because they had ancestral ties with Sparta. And just to be clear, the Athenians didn’t show up with a covered dish and introduce themselves as the neighbors. They showed up with an army, ready to throw down.

Instead of going right to the slaughtering and enslaving, though, they agreed to sit with the Melian leaders to negotiate. To everyone’s (meaning, no one’s) surprise, the negotiations don’t go the way Melos hoped and Athens slaughters the men and enslaves the women and children the end.

And why did Claude send me in this direction seeing how it’s not the uplifting story of the year?

Because the Melian Dialogue revealed something to me. What happened then and what I’m experiencing now aren’t the result of character flaws. They’re circumstances beyond our control. Every person experiences some version of this, being caught in a situation not of their own making but still headed for disaster anyway.

Melos is faced with an impossible choice. Submit to the Athenians and live under their rule - not awesome but everybody lives - or refuse, hope that Sparta comes to their aid, and saves them.

Friends, I recognize that hope is not a strategy and no one is coming to save me, either.

I asked Claude why the Melians didn’t leave Melos. There were plenty of reasons, all of them good. Logistics, resources, disagreement. It’s complicated, but they were already frogs in the boiling water by the time they realized they were out of options.

I get it. I probably should have been thinking about building my own foundation when the merger happened. I definitely should have started when my boss died. But like the Melians who thought Sparta would come to their aid, I believed the structure and relationships I’d built over 20 years would protect me. That may have been naive but given everything I thought I knew, it seemed reasonable at the time.

Accepting I was wrong goes deeper than planning a new direction and trying to figure out what a next step looks like. It means deconstructing the identity I’ve built over decades.

Because identity is what tripped me up, just like the Melians. Clinging to it made it impossible to see what was actually happening, and the pressure we felt made us both believe harder. We honestly trusted that our relationships, knowledge, and expectations would protect us. But Sparta didn’t come.

And even if it does in my case, it doesn’t matter anymore. I am fundamentally changed. The identity I clung to is practically dismantled and already being reassembled differently. This one has a foundation built on my initiative and decisions. I’m not waiting for other people to give me meaning. I’m gathering it for myself.

Thucydides wrote about a conversation that took place 2500 years ago, and it helped me clear a path forward, using ancient Greek tragedy and my own insight to navigate it. I was surprised by that. When I think ancient Greek tragedy, I start feeling a tweed jacket with elbow patches, a wingback chair next to a fireplace, and a pipe engulfing me. But that’s another identity problem and I recognize it this time. (Go me! 🥳)

But that reveals something important. I know it’s too late to go back now. I’m in the same circumstances but a different person, one who’s not relying on anyone else to tell me who I am or where I’m going, and then reward me for it. Now I’m creating my own rewards and I’m ready to see where the path leads next.

I’m still drawing the line at eating snails, though.