Everyone remembers the fall. Nobody talks about the fact that he flew. The myth of Icarus isn't a warning — it's a blueprint for those who dare.
We've been taught the story wrong. Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax melted. He fell. The lesson, we're told, is: don't be too ambitious. Don't reach too high. Know your place.
But that reading strips the myth of everything that makes it alive.
Icarus was imprisoned. He and his father Daedalus were locked in a tower with no way out. The wings weren't hubris — they were escape. They were the only option. And when Daedalus said 'don't fly too high, don't fly too low,' he wasn't giving a lesson in moderation. He was giving the instructions for survival in an impossible situation.
Icarus flew. He actually flew. A human being, made of flesh and feathers and wax, rose above the prison that had held him. For a moment — however brief — he was free.
I chose the name Icarus for my work because I know what it is to be imprisoned. By addiction. By shame. By the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we deserve. And I know what it is to build wings out of whatever you have left and throw yourself into the air.
The fall is real. I'm not romanticising it. The fall is devastating and humiliating and it costs you things you can't get back. But the fall is not the whole story.
The whole story is: he was imprisoned, and he flew.
That's the part worth remembering. That's the part worth building a life around.
When I work with people who are in the middle of their own fall — and I have been in the middle of mine — I don't start with the fall. I start with the flight. I start with: what were you reaching for? What were you trying to escape? What did freedom look like to you, even for a moment?
Because the fall is survivable. The question is whether you're willing to build new wings.