If you were told that the only way you could live the rest of your life with your greatest love was that you had to walk until the end of time and trust that your love was following behind you without ever checking, could you do it?
Hadestown is a Broadway musical retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, redone in an industrial, post-apocalyptic atmosphere. This year was the first time it had been recorded and shown in cinemas.
Never in my life have I ever seen a piece of art tell a story of love so honestly and perfectly that I have to say it made me mad at first watch.
Now, to explain why I was so mad at such a touching, classic story of love, you must understand the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. According to Greek Mythology, the two were understood to be love at first sight, and when Eurydice is tragically killed and taken by Hades into the underworld, Orpheus walks alone through all of Hades horrors to find Eurydice. After winning over Hades with his song of love, he allows Orpheus and Eurydice to walk out of the underworld together, BUT she has to follow behind him, and he cannot turn around and look to see if she is there. Ultimately, they almost make it before doubt fills his consciousness, and he ends up turning around, and the two are separated forever.
There is a quote I kept hearing about the musical and about the myth that I kept seeing, which was, “to love someone is to turn around.”
This pissed me off. What on Earth do you mean “to love someone is to turn around?” If you were told that all you had to do was walk for a certain amount of time without turning around to see them, of course you would do everything in your power to hold that promise to make it out alive. Certainly, to NOT love someone would be to turn around, right?
But that’s not at all what the myth was saying.
What we’re forgetting in this is the element that this is Hades’ idea, and he is not a god to be fooled. He would not create a task so simple that it would be easy to accomplish, in fact the task is in fact a doomed one, and anyone who possessed true, undying love for someone would fail. This is because Hades never gave the amount of time that the two would have to walk for. It wasn’t months, it wasn’t years, it wasn’t even decades. It would have been for the rest of their lives. Their task was to walk for the rest of their lives without ever speaking to one another, without ever touching one another, and without ever seeing one another.
Now think about this in your life; think of someone truly special to you. Someone you would say with all your heart, “I would go to the ends of the Earth for you.” Could you really go to the ends of the Earth and the end of time without EVER seeing, touching, or hearing them again? No more hugs from this person, no more laughs, no more soft words, no more soft touches or reminders that there is even still a bond between you both. It would only be human to turn around. Not to ensure that they were still following, but to promise that you would be able to just see them, touch them, hear them one last time.
To turn around would be to love so deeply that a life without them is unbearable, and worth the risk of defeat. Â That is the honest and raw truth of love: it is so divine in its nature, yet plagued with the human reality that must always end. To turn around is to accept that to love is to be painful yet beautiful, and the greatest gift to humankind.