Only three days ago I was in Athens, Greece, lamenting about how I had to leave a city with which I had fallen in love in such a short time. In the brief seven day trip, I had come to love so much about the city: the people, the food, the history, the atmosphere and weather, the personality, and even the language, despite its clear challenges. The one things, however, that confused me was the constant presence of upset and striking.
Now, granted, I did not see any full-blown brawls, but my friend and I witnessed a peaceful demonstration and a Syntagma Square full of camped-out Grecians in tents in protest of the government. As a naïve visiter, I admired it all from a distance but with little understanding of what the conflict involved and why so many Greeks were so passionate about their beliefs and in their frustrations. It took a local to explain to me some of the root causes of their displeasure, and while he was only able to explain a few of the concerns during our short encounter, I did understand that what he was explaining to me was only a brief skimming of the actual problem.
I left understanding that Greeks were unhappy about the debt and even the misrepresentation of what they owed in comparison to other countries. Some felt the media had expounded a debt issue to a "crisis" level that was not warranted. Some people felt the EU and the Greek government were not properly supportive of one another and that Greece might be better off on its own again, sans the EU. Still, some felt that the government needed to make reforms within the country to help pull the country out of its problem in a way that did not cut the legs out from under the middle class / working class people. And then there was the issue of general unemployment rates. In short, you can see why the brief conversation I had could not do justice to such an ingrained and involved predicament.
Ergo, I was able to continue enjoying my seven day vacation like any other tourist to any other city: parading around, strolling up and down the streets, drinking my strong Greek coffee at cafés and pretending I could speak Greek because I knew "Yiasas" and "Efaristo". Unfortunately, I returned home to find this article posted to the LA Times only a few days after my arrival back to a comforting home, shedding a quick spotlight onto the upheaval that had hit the city I had just left and loved so much. I missed the tear gas and the hours of conflict, the arresting of 12 protestors and the fleeing of tourists to side streets with the main government square turned into a brawl. I missed the police lining the streets and the shouting in Greek that filled the city. But more than that, I missed the true understanding that would have enabled me to empathize or truly comprehend the heart of the Greek youth, a heart that beat so strongly that it led the people to demonstrate and revolt for the inequalities they felt they faced. It's not that I missed the protest, per se, but rather that I missed the cultural awareness that it takes to be "present" in a city that I now understand I was merely "passing through".
How many times in history have we seen such actions: Tiananmen Square, the entire Civil Rights movement in the States, or the peaceful protests that just took place in Spain? It is people doing what people feel they must do to make their voices heard. In a matter of three days, the environment in Athens had changed drastically from a tourist-friendly city to one focused back on itself. And maybe it's not wrong. Maybe it's what Greece needs, or what the world needs to open its eyes to the problems people are really facing, the true reality, not the one we want to see "in passing". We need to be present in our world, not tourists with a visiting mindset. This is our world, our politics, our lives that are affected every day buy the decisions we make and the ones we allow others to make for us. It's just unfortunate that it takes something like a riot in Athens to make the news to make us readers, visitors, and onlookers face something we maybe should have taken note of before.
Yes, I love the Parthenon, and the Temple of Zeus, Santorini island and the wine tasting in Crete, but in order to love those things, I must not only understand the culture that created them but also the one that supports them now.
No comments:
Post a Comment