Iphigenia In Aulis Book

It made me cry.

It upset me.

A play by Euripides from 500 B.C.E. or so.

This reader has read Greek tragedies before but for some reason, this one ambushed.

We are so messed up. We are so fragile. Trauma is never far away. Tragedy can enter through any window or door or vent at any time.

Yes, it was a bit melodramatic. Yes, it may not have been completed by the man himself, his last work.

It's about a father, a mother, a daughter, a son, a brother.

It's about war and power. Always war and power. Why?

It's about family dysfunction. Blood does not create love.

Often, we navigate a shared animus with the people we have lived with during the first phase of our lives. We do not always play nice.

It's about each one of us.

It's about the expectations we allow ourselves that do not materialize.

It's about surrender.

It's about personal needs and how it may conflict with the desires of others.

It's about the desires of others and how we misinterpret it because they are not us.

We are not them.

A need to inspect and magnify our immanence. Continuously.

Humans break often.

And we attempt to repair.

But we cannot undo, unsee what we have experienced.

We carry our sufferings under our masks so as not to show vulnerability, distress, hurt, sadness to others.

Others who carry a similar load.

Why?