January 5 to 19, Athens and Santorini (again)

My third stop in Greece was unplanned, and turned out to be a pretty special time that I’m profoundly thankful for.

Up until Christmas, I didn’t have anything scheduled between January 5 and January 19. I had purposefully left that time unscheduled, kind of as an exercise in learning how to deal with uncertainty, letting go of control, and being open to whatever comes up.

My friend Kristi emailed me the day after Christmas, and asked me if I wanted some company. She had some plans fall through- and had always wanted to see Greece. So now I had plans.

We met up in Athens, where we spent 2 days in the Plaka and the Acropolis. Notable moments included visiting the Areopagus (where the Apostle Paul gave the sermon about an unknown god,) and eating a lot of fried cheese in Athenian cafes (halloumi, saganaki, etc…)

We hadn’t made specific plans for the trip, and had briefly discussed heading to Naxos and Corinth after Athens- but started off by heading to Santorini. Santorini was a good choice. We ended up getting stuck there in the best way possible.

It’s hard to describe how beautiful Santorini is. It’s also special in the off-season. Life seems… normal and quiet. During the tourist season, the population of Santorini is over 200,000. In the off-season, it’s around 30,000. So it’s a different vibe…  I was previously here in October with my parents on a cruise during tourist season. Over the summer, there’s a stressful kind of urgency and busy-ness with the business of “having fun and relaxing.” Over the winter, it’s slow, quiet, and quaint. You can wander through the alleys of Fira and Oia completely alone and unbothered- (except for maybe the donkeys hauling construction supplies and random donkey poops.) You can spend a few extra minutes getting to know the owner of the corner store- nobody’s in any rush. It’s nice.

Kristi was with me in Santorini until January 12. We stayed in a traditional cave house. Simple, cozy, beautiful place. There, we met our next-door neighbor Anne Marie, from Calgary. She’s fresh into a big transition from a pretty demanding (and successful) career, and from raising 2 kids as a single mom, and into a life with… different priorities.

Just prior leaving Calgary, she sold almost everything she owned to travel. She started her post-retirement travels in a tiny village in Italy. (The featured image is of a pair of slippers she bought from a Somalian street vendor in rural Italy.)  Her second stop was Santorini for 3 months.

There’s a few pictures of her below, (including her first selfie apparently, taken with Kristi and I.) She’s… a sweet and salty person. (That’s my best description. I feel like I’m describing honey roasted peanuts.) She has a unique kind of courage and unapologetic sense of herself. I feel like there aren’t a lot of people I know would just sell everything and leave to rural Italy. She’s kind, considerate, and generous (the sweet part,) doesn’t have time for bullshit or pretense, and probably swears as much if not more than I do (the salty part.) She also just speaks so freely and openly about her life- all the good and the bad. It’s pretty cool.

One particular evening was really memorable, and kind of illustrates what I find special about travel. The three of us spent the evening sitting out in the little garden just outside our door, drinking terrible local wine and mountain tea, sharing stories about our families. It doesn’t make for a best-selling novel or dramatic photograph. But it’s in those moments where I feel a lot of gratitude, and for lack of a better word- “connectedness.”

I think- If I ever have kids, they’ll benefit from the conversation that we had that night.

I’m not entirely sure how to articulate this stuff, but I want to get it down so I don’t forget.

There’s just something really important about letting a kid know that they’re loved and accepted without condition, that’s essential to developing a healthy identity and capacity for relationships… (and as far as I can tell those things are necessary conditions to thinking about and cultivating morality or integrity or any of that stuff.)

The thing is no one actually said that during the conversation, but the stories that were told illustrated the point to me. (Other folks have explicitly told me this stuff, but real life stories put some breath and mass to it in ways that abstract concepts cannot.)

For example- Anne Marie told us a story from her childhood, illustrating the kind of courage and freedom a kid can have if she knows her parents have her back. She was sent to catholic schools for a while. As a part of catholic education, there are certain things you have to memorize and profess as being a catholic. At some point, Anne Marie was asked to profess the notion that there is no salvation outside the catholic church, (and everyone else goes to hell.) As a pretty young kid, she concluded that she didn’t believe that and refused to say the catechism. So she got kicked out of school. Which, her parents were totally OK with and supportive of. They just had short conversation about what she believed and why, and just enrolled her in another school. For me, (and for Kristi,) that’s pretty mind-blowing.

Another story, is about Anne Marie as a parent. She had observed that some kids were picking on others in her son’s elementary school class. She had a conversation with her son about it, who at that point was like 7 years old. She basically made two related points. The first point was you have decide for yourself what is right or wrong in every situation in life. The second point was, when you see that other kids need help, the right thing to do is help them, and not to walk away. One day she found that her son had bruises, and she asked what happened. He had been beat up by another kid in the process of trying to help someone else. Subsequently, Anne Marie did two things. First, she went to the principal of the school and made him aware of the situation, and let him know that he had a responsibility to do something about it. (I think she also implied that if he didn’t do something about it, she would.) Second, one day after school, she found the kid who was responsible for hurting other kids, followed him off school grounds, and had a little conversation with him. She introduced herself, and informed him that if he ever hurt her son or any other kids at school, she would find him. (She was also carrying a big stick of some sort.)

I guess the things that I take away from it are that when kids (or people) generally have a deep sense of belonging and worthiness it can cultivate kind of courage and freedom that’s… special. There’s a relational courage that allows for deep relationships in spite of the risk for hurt or heartbreak, or a moral courage that allows someone to profess conviction or belief in spite of potential disagreement or persecution.

The thing is, letting a someone know they’re loved and accepted isn’t something that comes from rules or orthodoxy or data driven theory. (I also suspect that if a person needs rules and orthodoxy to tell you how to accept people and show love for people.. they’re pretty fucked.)

Long story short, I suspect that as long as you let your kids (or anyone really,) know, that they’re known/understood, loved, and accepted without conditions, you (as a parent) can probably screw up a lot of other things, but it will all work out anyway.