mentor

When Odysseus sailed off to the war at Troy, he left behind a newborn son, Telemachus, and a wife, Penelope, and a whole kingdom that would have to keep itself while its king was gone. Before he went, he did what a careful man does: he put his household in the hands of someone he trusted. That someone was an old friend named Mentor.

Mentor was not a warrior or a wizard. He was a steady, grey-headed companion of the family, the kind of man you leave in charge because he will not flatter you and will not lie. For twenty years he watched over the house while the king did not come home.

The boy Telemachus grew up fatherless, surrounded by loud, greedy suitors who ate his family out of house and home while they waited to marry his mother. He was young and unsure and did not know how to become a man. And here the story turns, because the goddess Athena, grey-eyed and wise, wanted to help him find his father and find himself.

She did not appear in a blaze of divine light. She came quietly, wearing the shape of Mentor, the trusted old friend. In that borrowed form she walked beside Telemachus, counselled him, put courage in him, and set him on the road to manhood. The voice guiding the boy was a goddess, but the face was that of the faithful adviser.

That is why, to this day, a mentor is a wise and trusted counsellor, an older hand who steadies a younger one and helps them grow into who they are meant to be.