We abandoned Gods, Gods were always here…

Well, we do not select where will we born and under what conditions… I was selected to live in this tiny strange place, full of rocks and sun and sea, during this strange time period where everything as we know it collapses with incredible speed on almost, daily basis.

Sunkissed and full of positive energy this place was supposed to give joy and fulfillment and inspiration for creativity. But these are not the days here in Greece… The last 20 years we were watching the self-destruction of our society, in particular the de-construction of a wonderful education system, a great small-medium manufacture and finally a wonderful, kind mentality replaced by opportunism.  The political system, corrupted is trying to keep its power at the expense of citizens. People lost their jobs, their businesses and they try to re-create their small planetary systems, to maintain their balance to keep on hoping for a better future. We have to say it. When we are good we are very good, but when we are bad, we are really bad… consequently, our country’s identity is faced in the international Mass Media with such extreme ways (and usually negative ones) and we do not worth such exaggerated, most of the times not real, generalizations (e.g., Greeks are lazy… based on what statistics or data? Please). Such negative treatment for a long period of time, since 2009, is not fair for any nation in the world.

Downtown Athens is such a mess… a wonderful capital with its beautiful and ugly angles, as every capital everywhere, many times had faced angry people who were created by the ‘system’ blindly destroying other people’s fortunes… how painful is this to watch, especially if you know the streets, the places. But downtown Athens is not the whole Greece, even though all international networks are interested in the capital only and I am sure in period of time, things will be better there, as I love the heart of this city.

Thank God, we are fortunate to have Sun over 260 days per year  and we are really lucky to live only ½ hour distance from Poseidon’s temple in Sounion, 1 ½ hour drive from Delfi, 4.5 hours from Delos, and the list goes on… what I am saying? I am saying that we are surrounded by temples, places full of positive energy and history. I am not talking about the past, I am not a fanatic (as we always consider somebody who talks about the past and his country as an ‘extremist’) but, as I cannot control it, I was born and live here in Greece (Hellas).  I was raised with the past which dictates up to a point, my genes and my way of life. Being born and raised in Greece is inspiring… to feel the breeze and the light of the ancient myths from Aesop and Homer’s stories around me, to watch ancient tragedies directly from the open air ancient theaters during hot summer nights with full moon and cicadas, to go to Chalkida for ouzo and sea food and to stop by the road, where  Ifigeneia was sacrificed, to visit our summer house in Kithairon mountain range, where Oedipus visited this place, where also Hercules killed the Nemean lion. And to visit my favorite place on earth, to stay in Delfi, near the Temple of Apollo. I have to admit this place has such fine and strong energy… is not possible to avoid my country’s history, beliefs, stories, myths all are deep in my heart, engraved in my skin, my genes… who can blame me for talking about what I live daily? 

Anyone in the world, who is open and wise, who might visit this tiny place, which causes so many issues in the global market, might feel Greek after a period of time here. What people outside Greece cannot understand and keep on criticizing about ancient Greece’s admiration from us, modern Greeks (yes, there are negative exceptions here too, as everywhere in the world in every issue) they cannot understand that we live in all these places for which they read or they are inspired. I want to be allowed to be inspired and write about Minotavros, Medoussa, Centavros, without being accused… Greeks are a purely sentimental nation (with its good and bad side) and use "enandiodromia" for a purpose. As Jung and Clarissa Pinkola Estes remind us, with the use of the term “enandiodromia”, which was used by Heraclitus and means ‘to flow backward’. As C.P. Estes writes "But this flowing backward can be more than a regression into the personal unconscious, it can be a heartfelt return to workable ancient values, more deeply held ideas”* What I can understand, is that we delve into subconscious, to go back to our archetypes which are symbolized by myths and Gods, back to where we believe or we want to belong and feel them, re-connect with them, in order to have the strenth to move on.

When I started writing as a profession a few years ago, I read all the gurus in Hollywood and not only, mentioning that Aristotle and his Poetics was the basis of writing, today and my number one reading.    

What bothers me is that am I not allowed to speak about my past with the fear that anyone would accuse me of looking back, of being a chauvinist, who is stuck with the past and ignores the present and the future. While someone with his own unique identity can discuss or present it but for me no, another stereotype, you’ve done nothing but being proud for your past.

Yes, I am proud for what we have done, as we were able to re-create our nation after 400 years of occupation, I am proud that after following all the recent world wars, a civil war, a junda, poverty and starvation, we were able to run fast to approach other European countries (with our limps and our setbacks and wrong decisions) and is this past which gives us the strength to move on and start again, from zero basis.  And now we have to face and create a new life, a brand new world, under these extreme living conditions for ourselves and the new generations... try to create a new life, business, opportunity when everything is demolishing around you, just try. I am sure we will make it right this time. We are forced, whether we like it or not, to face the present, to  heal our bad past, with the responsibility and the wise thinking that our actions will create/or not, a better place for our children. 

We are all people of this world, this time period, we all have the same universal routes, we are facing more or less the same challenges, I have friends who live all over the world, whom I love and cherish in my heart who really worry about me and my family as we do for them… we have to face it, we need to understand, to feel compassion, to share, to respect, to feel empathy.

Today, as each one of us is forced to re-invent our own destiny, we can be inspired from the past, to create a new future. After all Hope/Elpis is all that we own and that is such a universal feeling and we feel it today, now for our future…

With love & rays of Athenian light,

Alexandra Belegrati

* Chapter, La Selva Subterranea, “Women who run with the wolves”, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

*Picture by the stadium and temple of Apollo in Delfi.