The Boy With Wax Wings
His name was Icarus. And he was not a fool.
He was the son of Daedalus — the greatest craftsman and inventor in all of Greek mythology. The man who built the Labyrinth of Crete, who solved problems that no mortal had solved before. Intelligence ran in the family.
When King Minos imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus in a tower, Daedalus did what he always did — he thought his way out. He spent months collecting feathers dropped by birds on the windowsill. He shaped them with wax into two pairs of wings, large enough to carry a man. He tested every joint, every feather, every curve.
And before they leapt from the tower into the open sky, Daedalus took his son by the shoulders and said:
"Fly the middle path, Icarus. Too low and the sea's moisture will clog your wings. Too high and the sun's heat will melt the wax. The middle. Always the middle."
Icarus nodded.
Then he flew. And the sky was extraordinary. The wind was beneath him, the world was small below him, and the feeling — oh, the feeling of that altitude — was unlike anything a human being had ever known.
And he flew higher.
The wax began to soften.
The feathers began to separate.
And Icarus — brilliant, beloved, careless Icarus — fell into the sea.
What Aristotle Saw That Nobody Else Did
In 350 BCE, a philosopher in Athens was thinking about a completely different problem.
Aristotle was not thinking about mythology. He was thinking about virtue. About what it actually means to live well, to be good, to make decisions that hold up over time.
And he arrived at an idea so elegant that it has survived two and a half thousand years:
Virtue is not an extreme. It is the middle.
He called it the Golden Mean — mesotes in Greek. The idea was simple but profound. For every human quality, there are two ways to get it wrong — through excess and through deficiency. And the virtuous path is always the one between them.
Courage, for example, is not fearlessness — that is recklessness. And it is not excessive caution — that is cowardice. Courage is the middle. The person who feels appropriate fear and acts anyway.
Generosity is not squandering everything you own. And it is not miserliness. It is the middle — giving proportionately, thoughtfully, sustainably.
Aristotle was not describing a compromise. He was describing precision. The kind of precision that only comes from understanding both extremes clearly and choosing neither.
Icarus, had he lived to read Aristotle, might have recognised himself in those pages.
Every Project Has Its Icarus Moment
I want you to think about the last project you worked on — or watched unfold — and find the Icarus moment.
There is always one.
Sometimes it is a stakeholder who, intoxicated by the possibilities of a new system, promises the client a feature set that the team cannot realistically deliver. Flying too high. The sun is right there, warm and inviting, and the wax is already softening.
Sometimes it is a BA who has been burned before — by scope creep, by changing requirements, by projects that unravelled — and so becomes rigid. Every change request denied. Every new idea met with a formal change control form and a three-week impact assessment. Flying too low. Wings waterlogged. Nobody can move.
Sometimes it is a developer who over-engineers a straightforward feature into an architectural masterpiece that solves problems the project doesn't have. Flying too high again, in a different direction.
And sometimes — perhaps most painfully — it is a talented professional who is so afraid of being wrong that they never quite commit. They hedge every recommendation. They present seventeen options when the stakeholder needs one clear answer. Too low. Too careful. Too much sea spray.
The fall is different in each case. But the pattern is always Aristotle's.
The Golden Mean for Business Analysts
Let me make this concrete. Because Aristotle is useful precisely when he is specific.
On Scope:
Too rigid → You block legitimate change and frustrate stakeholders.
Too flexible → You absorb every new idea and the project loses its shape.
The Golden Mean → You have a clear process for evaluating change. You welcome new ideas through the right channel. You quantify impact before deciding. You protect the core while remaining genuinely open.
On Documentation:
Too detailed → Nobody reads it. It becomes a monument to effort that has no actual use.
Too sparse → Critical decisions go unrecorded. Misunderstandings multiply. The project runs on assumptions.
The Golden Mean → Documentation that is precise enough to be unambiguous and concise enough to be used. Every document serves a real reader with a real need.
On Stakeholder Management:
Too agreeable → You lose credibility. Stakeholders stop trusting your assessments because they know you will say yes to everything.
Too confrontational → You become the obstacle. People route around you.
The Golden Mean → You are the person who always gives an honest assessment. Who says "here is what I see, here is the trade-off, here is my recommendation." Who can push back with warmth and hold firm with grace.
On Confidence:
Too much → You stop asking questions. You assume you already know what the stakeholder means. You stop listening.
Too little → You cannot make a recommendation when one is needed. You second-guess every judgement call.
The Golden Mean → You ask questions until you genuinely understand. Then you commit to a clear, well-reasoned answer — and you own it.
The Moment Before the Leap
Here is what I find most heartbreaking about the Icarus story.
He knew.
His father had told him clearly. The instructions were not complicated. Fly the middle path. The warning was given in love, with precision, by the most intelligent man he had ever known.
And still, in the rush and the joy and the extraordinary feeling of altitude, he forgot.
I think about that in professional life. How many times do we know the middle path — we have been told, we have seen others fall, we understand the principle — and still, in the excitement of a new project or the pressure of a deadline or the flattery of a stakeholder who tells us we can do anything, we fly a little too high?
Or how many times, bruised by a past failure, do we fly deliberately low — safe, damp, going nowhere — because the height once cost us something?
Aristotle's answer to both is the same: Develop the habit of the mean. Practice it until it is not a conscious calculation but a second nature. The virtuous person, he said, is not the one who white-knuckles their way to the right decision. It is the one for whom the right decision has become natural.
That is what great Business Analysis looks like. Not a set of techniques. A cultivated way of thinking.
The Power Phrase to Carry With You
The next time you feel pressure to over-promise — to fly too high to please someone — say this:
"Let me give you my honest assessment rather than the answer that sounds best right now."
It takes courage to say. But it is always the middle path.
And it is the one that keeps your wings intact.
🌟 Quote to carry with you today:
"Virtue is the golden mean between two vices — one of excess and one of deficiency."
— Aristotle
🪞 Reflect on This:
Where in your work are you flying too high right now?
And where are you flying too low?
Leave a comment — I read every single one. And sometimes, just naming both extremes is enough to help you find the middle.
📌 If this was useful, share it with someone navigating a difficult project decision today.
Follow The Write Path for the full BA Philosopher series — ancient wisdom, modern business, every week.
Further Reading:
Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle (~350 BCE)
Metamorphoses — Ovid (the original Icarus story in full)
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman (modern parallel to the Golden Mean in decision-making)
Next on The Write Path:
"The Gordian Knot — What Alexander the Great Can Teach You About Over-Engineered Requirements"
