You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?
I do not disagree with this at all, but there's something you have to keep in mind whenever you're studying the classics: everyone used to live on the edge of a knife.
Everyone- kings, priests, 'nobles', scholars, craftsmen, and ordinary people alike- was subject to the will of the harvest and the will of the weather. One drought was enough to cause mass famine and mass death. Five years of bad weather was enough to destroy a kingdom.
50% of all children born- to king or slave alike- would die before they reached the age of 5. (In the worst shitholes on earth today, that number is 14%. In countries with access to proper medical care, it's less than 1%.)
A lot of stories written in the past- Greek myths, the Bible, the Torah, or Chinese legends- caution people against hubris. If you are living at the edge of a knife, any risk you might take doesn't just harm you. It harms your family, your community, and (if it's bad enough) possibly the entire world.
If every man in your village goes off to war and plays hero, you might not have enough men come back to harvest your crops. If you leave your family behind to go off and seek your fortune, and you fail to find your fortune, you're risking your family not having enough to eat, your children (or your parents) dying while you're gone, or dishonour and scandal on everyone you care about.
....If you have access to Tumblr, you no longer live on the edge of a knife. Your society has enough food to feed you, regardless of a bad year; if you take risks, the person they're most likely to impact is you. We've invented wings of steel that can fly so high that there is no "air"; the sun is no longer our enemy.
You have the power to be happy in a way your distant ancestors could never have dreamed of. They fought like hell to get you here. Reach for it.
