Greece has to continue fighting for its worth and future but has to do without internal divisions and learn to cooperate as a team to overcome the dire obstacles. Unity, conviction and national self-confidence are needed more than ever to overcome difficulties.
Difficult moments are expressed in simple words. To find the strength to continue you have to feel as though you are living your last day. This is something that people who in their lives, have fought, progressed and achieved their goals know well. No matter how difficult the circumstances they don’t turn to trite slogans and give up.
This is the strength of purpose that keeps the world turning, or else we would still be living in caves. Think of the words of a man who started very low with all the odds against him but made his way to the top of the world. Muhammad Ali said “Impossible is only a big word for small men that think it is easier to live in a world that they have been given rather than to search for a way to change it.”
This is why we believe that the best of all global corporate slogans is Adidas’s “Impossible is nothing”
This is also a reason I am a fan of actor and director Christofors Papakaliatis and recommend his new movie “If.” In cinematographic terms it may not be more than a collage of copies but at the end the meaning is clear – that we have to move on. And this is the message that Greek society needs more than ever from what we hear the movie has succeeded in grossing record revenues and is a commercial success.
The difficulties we face before us as a country are a given and there is no point in hiding that. We all experience that at our own level and there is confusion as well as insecurity and fear. There are daily dramas. But if we just resort to slogans in the face of this reality and resign ourselves from the need to fight so we can do our best then we will allow ourselves to drop into a bottomless pit and we don’t know where will end up. This is the greatest danger at the moment.
When it so happens that you live in a country that is “prime real estate” with the geopolitical terms of any age, then it is to be expected that your life won’t be as calm as that of Switzerland. Greece from the dawn of the ages, even in ancient times with the wars against the Persians until modern history and today’s difficulties, is obliged to do one thing again and again – to defend its worth.
Everyone knows and recognizes its invaluable worth but everyone wants to capture it on the cheap. And in this quest they have had through time one unexpected ally. The internal divisions of the Greeks themselves. For example – Athenians and Spartans, socialist Pasok and conservative New Democracy, nationalists and communists, and left and right. We turn everything into a derby between ourselves assisting the strategy of “divide and conquer” which is the all-time classic approach of foreign powers to Greece.
All the current fabric of political life, from the far right to the far left today has a historic responsibility for how they will manage the current difficulties. But of continue in the manner of “we the good guys, and you the bad guys” which all sides are playing at the moment, the outcome will not be good.
Greece no longer has the luxury of division. We are far too small a country to allow ourselves not to see the person next to us or to see them with envy. We have to turn this into a team game and then with the understanding that we all belong to the same team we can re-win our national confidence.
Take a very simple example. The longer we leave the game in the hands of fear and envy, belief and trust will be far removed. Alternatively, if we had a sense of national confidence we would not be speaking about memorandums or austerity measures. It would be enough if all Greek deposits we repatriated to Greece. But this can’t happen unless we learn to play as a team, with clear rules and a belief in ourselves so we can turn the game in our favor and win.
How do we rebuild trust? We can start by saying a good word about a Greek. Afterwards … impossible is nothing.
PS. Anyone who doesn’t see that people are ready to follow whoever comes out first as says, “We are all Greeks!” then they have no idea about communication.
