In the late morning groups of middle-school-aged girls headed to the ferry dock with rolling suitcases in tow – each group accompanied by one to two adults. Between twice and four times a day, depending on the time of year and day of the week, the "high speed" catamaran ferries stop at Patmos as they run their routes connecting the islands of the Dodecanese. These are much smaller than the giant Blue Star ferries with five garage decks and two decks with private cabins. These are more very nice floating buses getting passengers (and a few vehicles, often motorscooters and motorcycles) from here to there in a few hours – with much greater chance of feeling choppy waters.
This week Patmos hosts its annual summer three-on-three basketball tournament for middle school and high-school-aged kids from around the Dodecanese. They use the very nice outdoor basketball courts just past the soccer fields in Skala which were built just a few years ago. While soccer has long been the game of Greece – and most of the world – basketball is catching on with kids. Schools now have basketball teams I increasingly see teens wearing NBA jerseys – particularly the Lakers!
So, in the background, while tourists come in from cruise ships for the day or from the ferries big and small to stay for days or even weeks – Patmian, Lerosian, Kosian and many other "ian" kids are playing basketball in the very nice 78 degree, mildly breezy weather. In a place where the most noticeable things in the town square are the cruise passengers exploring and shopping or the Greek and French tourists drinking coffee and smoking, it's cool to see Patmos doesn't just cater to visitors but continues a life of its own, supporting kids playing basketball over the summer.
Staying here in Spring 2022, I came to realize, high school sports is a major undertaking in the Dodecanese. While Rhodes has seven high schools, Kos five, Samos four despite being larger than any of the other islands of its chain, Leros has only two, Patmos just one which shares a campus with the middle school and Lipsi just one – only smaller than Patmos'. The high school league calendar involves away-travel by boat to islands sometimes as far as seven hours away. If you're Patmos, Lipsi or Fourni – every single away-game involves travel and of course every home game involves arranging accommodation for the visiting team including staff and parents. If you're Leros or Ikaria, you get an occasional cross-island game, but still travel and host a lot.
Multiply all of this across multiple sports – at least soccer and basketball – and it sounds exhausting for whoever has to manage all the details, and expensive to run. Notably, parents don't go to away games the way we're used to in most American school districts where other schools are within a half-hour, at worst an hour drive. I noticed that fateful Spring there was a VERY high teen-to-adult ratio. Clearly some school staff and a handful of volunteer parents. That was it. I'm sure the time and expense weighs heavy on a family, especially if a parent has multiple children or a business. You might even calculate the total-cost benefit of an away-game. For example, it might be worth it to go to Rhodes or Kalymnos where they have larger, better healthcare facilities and fit-in a doctor's appointment – particularly if you see a specialist.
Sennen is now a middle-schooler and very into basketball. It's sad he's missing this tournament when one of his goals for the summer is to join pickup games of basketball and soccer when he gets here – in just a week and a half. Several kids have told me they're happy to introduce him to the group of boys who play basketball and soccer in the evenings at the court and field at the end of town.
Instead he and Ailyn are at Camp Alonim this week – which is also a great choice for them. They love their camp experience and they're surrounded by kids playing all kinds of sports. So, I suppose the Patmos three-on-three basketball tournament can wait. Maybe next year the timing will align….
Looking at the camp photos available through the Companion app parents can use to send letters and view photos of their kids, I can see how Sennen's group looks different than in prior years. More fashion and hairstyles. They're at the age where they're trying out styles, presentations, identities – both to figure out who they are and to see the social impacts of various presentations. Sennen spends a lot more time and energy on selecting clothes, hair products, and even cologne than he once did.
Of course that's normal. Adolescence is a time of social experimentation, stratification, image crafting, conformity, differentiation, emotionality – and sometimes just being cruel. In a book I'm reading, older French people call the teenage years "the ungrateful age". It's amazing how the nicest of kids can do really mean things to one another.
Recently, I was talking to a woman my age who told how in middle school she and two friends emotionally beat-up a girl who had been part of their group and then did something they didn't like (largely because they didn't understand what she was going through). The woman said she has no idea why she and her friends got SO mean and looking back she can't really relate to the person she was – almost like it was temporary insanity. She said she's terribly ashamed of her behavior today, but at the time she and her friends felt totally justified.
Sennen is about to navigate some of the most socially fraught waters of his life. And I really hope he doesn't create or add to someone else's agony, though realistically – he probably does or will.
I think middle school is one of the most difficult ages for parents to relate to and support their kids because so often – like the woman ashamed of her middle-school behavior – we can't necessarily relate to the people we were at that age. I've noticed adults have much clearer memories of their high-school-selves, particularly late high-school selves. This makes sense – at 16-18 we're not adults, but we're a lot closer to it. There's more shared emotional space between the people we were and the people we are. Middle school and early high-school are a crucible of change of which we're beginning to come out on the other side by 16.
I often talk to Sennen or remind him that middle school kids are weird – and sometimes really dumb. And that he's one of them, so he needs to try to be self-aware and not do dumb and hurtful things to people, just as he doesn't like it when other kids do dumb and hurtful things to him or kids he's friends with.
So much of the negative of Sennen's age has to do with kids either trying to find social supremacy or deciding how far they're willing to go – actively or passively – toward being in a particular social circle. Kids try out limits and roles.
Of course, there's. a positive side of all of this – and perhaps an important evolutionary reason why we go into these strange social stages. Being able to shift roles, navigate groups and invent and reinvent ourselves are important skills for adulthood. The flexibility and intelligence to recognize we each have many aspects and at different times of life, we may need to call on different parts of ourselves. In order to succeed in careers we may need to change how we present ourselves. For example, right now I'm earning a living primarily from by business development skills and experiences. In my last role, I tapped into my leadership and operational skills. When I write this blog or my column, it's my journalism background that comes through. Learning how to present myself for best effect in different moments is key to earning a living – perhaps now more than it was a generation or two ago.
This is why people often have multiple versions of their resumes, right?
We frequently have different family personas than work-life personas and a different version of may show up to a cocktail party or wedding reception than shows up to a lunch with our best friend. I've done basically the same job for multiple companies and yet presented myself quite differently because of different company cultures. I really struggled when one company I worked for wanted everyone to wear orange as much as they could. I mean, of all colors….
For most of us, we spend our lives fluidly adjusting to the "us" we're currently part of. We slip into the groove of the current group with which we're trying to be part of – or cooperate with. It's an essential piece of human-beings' success – being able to cooperate in large numbers (I know it doesn't always feel like that, but consider how we all get utilities or how we participate in a global financial system, or that roughly 100,000 flights take off and land everyday globally – most days without any incident).
As adults we're expected to nimbly shift in some areas – like having multiple resumes or walking into a big meeting with the right approach – but not in others. The more responsibility I take on, the less freedom I have to creatively try out new versions of myself. I'm a father which means if I want to do a good job for my kids, I can't consider a career pivot that would involve a graduate degree – because that just financially and logistically isn't feasible. In the context of a divorce, I can't even move to another part of town without seriously disrupting my kids' lives.
Sure, I can buy a different-styled wardrobe, get a different kind of car, find a new sport or hobby, but there are far more limits than when I was 25 – if I want to honor my connections and responsibilities. There are still a few ways to get creative – like buying a house on a Greek island for summer use and taking the kids on international trip in the winter. I still try to think of and look for business ideas that might have me working on things that feel important to me – more substantive. Doing meaningful work rather than just what generates an income would be a nice thing – and I believe is possible.
In my twenties, I learned the very valuable lesson that life can be lived in many different ways. We don't have to follow one paradigm. If we really want, we can tear up everything we have and start anew somewhere else, living in some other way. For me, the legalities of the divorce and custody limit how creative and daring can be. I'd love to change our lives more – but for now, I can't without paying a high price. Still, that's something I can save for later. There are so many places I'd like to be, ways I'd like to spend my time and people I have yet to cooperate with.
Growing up, I felt people went from highly fluid – ie kids and teens who were still developing – to static adults. Certainly, some of the adults who I was closest to and most loved were fairly static people – especially my Grandpa. My Grandpa had many virtues but perhaps his highest was his constancy which tied to his reliability, loyalty, strength, courage and stoicism. My Grandpa was a rock. And a man of routine, and principle. He was always early. the coffee perk always turned on by 6am, unless he was playing golf and then it was 5am. Unless something else was thrust upon him, lunch was an alternation between Laura Scudders peanut butter on Hi-Ho crackers (or Ritz if Hi-Ho's were not available) or on a slice of toast.
So it appeared to me that after a certain age, life was a path you followed and that path must have been enjoyable, even if it was less dynamic.
It seems to me the trick – the challenging part to crack – is how to have Grandpa's virtues without the peanut butter and the coffee perk? How can we remain dynamic, fluid and creative within the bounds of integrity, care and loyalty for the people we love and the commitments we make?
After a certain age, the methods we used in our younger years no longer work. If you change your hair and buy a new wardrobe, a lot of times you just look like you're having a midlife crisis. Getting a sports car – same. Learning something new, like how to play music or getting later-in-life degree just because you've always wanted to – those seem cooler. Climbing K2 with your teen-to-adult children or sojourning in India – awesome once the kids are a certain age. My friend Benny, whose kids are in their twenties made a career pivot from technology sales to chaplain. He wanted to do work that was spiritually meaningful to him and now he's doing it. I love that for him – and all the people he'll help. It's a win for everyone.
In fact, Benny is a great example of another way to look at fluidity and dynamism. The people I admire most are the ones who aren't really different in various settings. They're the people who manage to be themselves - all of themselves – all of the time. That's real integrity. Internal integrity. It's also something my Grandpa and Benny have in common. What a gift to be able to show up anywhere in your life in consistent congruity.
I want to be careful here, because this is where a lot of pop-culture writers and personalities take a bad turn. Living in consistent congruity is not necessarily living life out loud on your own terms – as I've heard it spun. Instead, personal integrity involves being who you are, wherever you are, including owning what's yours. My Grandpa and Benny are people who tend to their ties, own their responsibilities, allow themselves to be owned by others because that is the nature of love. There is a certain irony – an almost paradoxical quality – to the fact that being your whole self all the time means accepting and comfortably carrying all the responsibility of your life - and finding joy and meaning in it. We find freedom in limits because without ties, we don't mean very much – we don't fully live.
Which, as in so many things, leads us back to Chapter 21 of The Little Prince. The Fox proposed to The Little Prince that they become friends which starts with The Little Prince taming the Fox.
“What does that mean—'tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. ‘It means to establish ties.”
“’To establish ties’?”
"Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”
"But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."
The caveat to all of this the Fox later explains,
"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
