Can ‘The Odyssey’ Help Me Find My Purpose? I Went to Greece to Find Out

“What’s your Ithaca?” The question is posed to me by Mary Vandorou, Euphoria Retreat’s spiritual teacher, as I sit cross-legged on a floor scattered with oversized cushions, looking out across the mountains of the Greek Peloponnese.

Truthfully, I’d only learned what Ithaca was about 20 minutes earlier. For anyone else whose knowledge of Greek mythology begins and ends with Disney’s Hercules: Ithaca is the homeland of Odysseus, hero of Homer’s epic poem, whose journey home after the Trojan War took 10 years—repeatedly delayed, sometimes by forces entirely outside his control, sometimes by his own distraction (a seven-year detour with the enchantress Calypso, for one). For many people, particularly Greeks, it’s a story stitched into the fabric of life. At its core, it’s simply a tale about the messiness of being human, and how we find our way through it.

Sitting opposite Mary, the question now suddenly feels loaded. What’s my Ithaca? You tell me, Mary.

At 35, I have the same anxieties that many millennials seem to be grappling with right now—except saying them out loud immediately makes them sound both incredibly trivial and also overwhelming. Is AI about to make my career obsolete? Am I ever going to meet the love of my life? Do I actually want children, or am I simply panicking because society insists I should know by now? What, exactly, is my life supposed to look like?

Somewhere down the line, many of us have become obsessed with finding our purpose. We just haven’t become any better at actually finding it.

It’s these questions that have brought me to Euphoria Retreat, a holistic wellness sanctuary tucked into the foothills of Mystras in southern Greece, for its five-day Odysseus Journey program. Founded in 2018, Euphoria blends ancient Greek philosophy with traditional Chinese medicine, and its signature Methodos approach is designed to help guests better understand how they move through the world, particularly during periods of transition.

Timed with the release of Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation—starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, and Robert Pattinson, to name but a few of the star-studded cast—the retreat reimagines Homer’s ancient tale as a framework for modern self-discovery. As it turns out, plenty of us are still trying to find our way ‘home.’

The setting certainly doesn’t hurt. Unlike some luxury wellness destinations, which can occasionally feel like new-age hospitals, Euphoria manages to feel genuinely soulful. After flying into Athens, it’s a three-hour drive through olive groves and winding mountain roads until the resort suddenly appears, perched above the town of Sparta with Mount Taygetus in the distance.

There's an almost monastic quality to the place. Guests drift between the arched spa and sun-drenched terraces in floaty co-ords, quietly reading books, sipping Greek mountain tea, or disappearing off to acupuncture appointments. Nobody is filming a morning routine, or seems particularly interested in optimization or biohacking, either. It’s calm and soothing in a way that feels increasingly rare.

My program is entirely one-to-one, though group options exist too. Most other guests I meet are on protocols targeting immunity, sleep, or weight management, but because The Odysseus Journey is less prescriptive, meals are simply a joyful extension of the experience rather than something to be carefully monitored.

I make the most of it: a seabass ceviche, bright and violently fresh; bowls of pasta with local cheese; and the sort of salads that remind you how underwhelming store-bought tomatoes have become. And then, on my final night, the best dessert I have eaten in my life—a choux bun filled with ice cream, doused tableside in melted chocolate warmed through with nutmeg, cayenne, and cinnamon. They call it chocolate soup; I’d call it a religious experience.

Each day, I meet Mary for a 90-minute session combining storytelling, philosophy, and guided meditation. Equal parts therapist, storyteller, and wise aunt, she has an uncanny ability to gently dismantle whatever overthinking you’ve arrived with.

Over the five days, we work through the five elements that underpin both traditional Chinese medicine and Euphoria’s own Methodos philosophy: water, wood, fire, earth, and metal, each one mapped onto a different chapter of Odysseus’s journey. She speaks almost entirely in metaphor, but it’s never hard to follow, and it has an uncanny knack for landing exactly where it hurts. Every session closes with a guided meditation, Mary weaving whatever I’ve just told her into the visualisation: fears, anecdotes, old wounds I hadn’t realized I was still carrying.

Like a lot of people, I’ve become accustomed to wellness promising huge transformations. Every week brings a new trend claiming to optimize, biohack, or reinvent us—supplements for longevity, gadgets for stress, apps for mindfulness, endless advice on becoming the best version of ourselves. Somewhere down the line, wellness feels like it’s become another item on an already overwhelming to-do list.

But the longer I’m here, the more this retreat feels different. Maybe because there’s no pressure to emerge as a completely new person. Instead, it gently asks you to pay attention to the journey you’re on.

Each element is explored both physically and emotionally, before being paired with a treatment or two. Water—which represents both the beginning of life and the start of Odysseus’s journey—has me relaxing in a salt room before floating weightlessly during a Watsu session, whale song reverberating beneath the warm water, the lights dimmed low. If you’ve never tried water shiatsu: it’s calming, enveloping, and makes you feel, improbably, like a baby back in the womb.

Wood, linked to growth and forward motion, is embodied through tai chi and a forest walk scented with wild herbs. While fire represents passion and joy, which arrives via an 80-minute Euphoria Bodywork massage, hot oil dripped from a candle, finished with dry brushing and cupping.

Earth, the “mother” element, is about resilience and roots; it’s where Mary and I get into my tendency to people-please, and the treatment—a chakra-balancing massage focused on hands, feet, and head—is designed to unlock wherever that tendency has lodged itself in my body.

And then, metal: letting go. Linked to the lungs and large intestine, it’s the element of cleansing and release—fear, perfectionism, and past grief I hadn’t realized I was still very much carrying. The treatment is the Euphoria Byzantine Hammam, where you’re scrubbed, washed, plunged into cold water, massaged, and left feeling reborn. It mirrors the moment Odysseus, shipwrecked and naked, washes up on the shore of the Phaeacians before finally realizing what he actually wants: to go home.

And while each of the treatments I experienced was heavenly, I’ll admit it was the conversations that really stayed with me. Throughout the week, Mary keeps returning to the idea that life isn’t a destination to be reached but an experience to be lived. It sounds obvious, but I realize how much of my own life I’ve spent waiting to arrive somewhere. When work feels stable, I’ll relax. When I meet the right person, I’ll feel more secure.

The writer in a Himalayan salt room at Euphoria Retreat.

Maybe that’s why a 3,000-year-old story still resonates so much. The context has changed, but the underlying anxieties haven’t. If anything, many of us are now more overwhelmed than ever, with endless options, constant opportunities for comparison, and a pressure to know exactly where we’re heading. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us became fixated on arriving at a final destination—the perfect career, relationship, or version of ourselves—and forgot that uncertainty is actually a perfectly normal place to live.

Mary tells me that many guests arrive at this retreat standing at some kind of crossroads—a little lost, facing a decision, staring down a new chapter. Of course, I can relate. On the surface, I’d arrived stressed about work and anxious about falling behind some invisible societal timeline. But underneath that, if I’m honest, was simply the feeling of being a bit lost—not quite trusting myself, or any particular direction, to be the right one.

In one of our final sessions, Mary gently challenges my tendency towards nostalgia. She doesn’t want me to have hope—at least, not in the white-knuckled, manifesting sense, because hope, she says, is still rooted in longing. Instead, she wants me to expect.

“Excitedly expect,” she says with a warm, knowing smile. “Because you deserve these things, and they will come. Feel that excitement now and in the meantime, have some fun.”

So, what is my Ithaca? I don’t fully know yet—and after five days, hours of meditation, and one transcendent bowl of chocolate soup, I’ve stopped expecting a neat answer to arrive on cue. But I leave Euphoria with something that feels, if not like certainty, at least like permission—to stop bracing for the journey home, and start actually enjoying the detour.