"People ask me, isn't it so boring here? There's nothing to do!" Michaelis explained. "But they're crazy! There's so much to do here! You can fish, you can swim, you can look for food like mushrooms and veggies on the hills. You can hike. There is so much!"
"Maybe they're people who like movie theaters and shopping malls?" I offered.
"Yes, movie theaters. That's the one thing from Athens I missed. So I put one in my house. Now I have everything!"
Michaelis went to college in Athens. But I didn't know if he had been further.
"Have you traveled much?"
"Yes, all over the place – to many countries! There are many nice things. But this is the best place to live."
There's only one thing that brings darkness to perpetually smiling 30ish Michaelis' world: his mother's metastasized breast cancer. Michaelis is a very dedicated son and cancer or any significant medical condition is an ordeal because the Health Center on Patmos is not a hospital. It's more of a hybrid physician's office, urgent care and emergency room and is staffed by the government with physicians doing rotations "in the provinces". Anything serious must be sent to a hospital either on another island like Kalymnos, Kos, Samos or Rhodes – or all the way to Athens if it needs more specialized care. True emergencies involve helicopter evacuation from the island's rarely used heliport across from the tiny army base on a hillside north of Skala. Michaelis' mom needs four chemo treatments of which she has done three and completes her last round in July. Just the trips back and forth to Athens are a lot for a sick woman during COVID and Michaelis has been very involved in her process.
"We have everything here you could ever want, except healthcare," Giannis (said Yannis), Nicholas' eldest son told me two weeks ago. "It's the perfect place to live except you pay the price when there's an emergency. My father's heart attack – he's lucky to be alive. If the doctor at the Health Center that day hadn't been a heart specialist and hadn't known what to do right away, my father would have been [noise and tilt of the head signifying death]." Nicholas' ordeal included a helicopter off the island – but not before the first helicopter failed because it was too big to land successfully. A smaller helicopter was eventually dispatched and he was taken to Kalymnos – the closest hospital – and then transferred again to Rhodes with a much larger, better equipped one. It took more than eight hours until he received angioplasty and a stent. Nicholas survived but with significant long-term damage to his heart.
"He's not the same anymore," Giannis explained. "Now he gets tired very easily."
These are the trade-offs they all recognize. I have encountered few Patmians that haven't lived somewhere else at some point – whether for college or career or a change of pace – and returned to Patmos. They take great pride in their island and I have heard no one complain they're caught out in the sticks. Even among the people from other places like Athens and in one case, Italy, there's a recognition that this is a pretty great place to spend one's time.
I've had a range of reactions from people at home to my being here. While most have been supportive if not encouraging of my taking time away at this time, several have wondered if there would be too little for me here in Patmos. Wouldn't it be boring after awhile? Wouldn't I be lonely? Isn't it too small and remote? I'm in Michaelis' camp (minus the foraging). Patmos is more than sufficient with things I enjoy and while I am not building my own movie theater, I feel adequately covered by my Amazon Fire Stick and a flat screen tv.
In a sense, it's funny that I like it here so much. I can't imagine living in a small town in America. I'm not the kind of guy who is likely to live off County Road X. Perhaps I could do it with a coastal town – I lean toward living within range of the ocean. In fact, I have never lived inland anywhere at any time in my life. So maybe what works for me here is the maritime version of rural. Perhaps it's also that the Greek version of rural involves outdoor restaurants, fresh produce shops and independent businesses – not fast-casual dining chains and strip-malls. As I've mentioned before, nothing except the AlphaBeta supermarket and the one bank branch (or three bank-operated ATM's if we want to go big) are corporate or chain.
Yet, by contrast to certain communities at home, Patmos isn't trying to be corporate and chain-free. It's not a political or social statement. It just is. There's no pretention. No one is discussing the problems with monoculture farming over a little gems salad with a homemade green goddess dressing at a One-Michelin-Star farm-to-table restaurant and then hopping in their BMW's to return to their ridiculously renovated homes. This is just life.
Patmos challenges me to consider what I'm working for. What is the good life? What is enough? What is living to my potential and what is just aimless drive – or buying into a system?
We all face the perennial tension between complacency and ambition. Somehow the extremes are easy enough to identify – the couch potato sitting in his or her parents house with no job and no plans on one end and the corporate climber making tons of money but with no soul or enjoyment of life. There are a few other variations on these end-of-the-spectrum caricatures. Americans hang out these boogeymen a lot. The truth is it's easy enough to avoid either extreme. Finding our right place in the middle is the challenge.
What is being happy with having enough and what is settling? What is making your nut and what is senselessly running the rat race? Is work a means to an end or an occupation of value and meaning? If it is means to an end, then what exactly is that end? Is it more than having the right car, house and opportunities for your children? What is the success that makes the sacrifices worthwhile? How do you know when you've arrived? When can you take your foot off the accelerator – or when is it time to get your shit together and hit the gas?
Naturally, the answers are different for different people and even for one person at different stages in life. Of course during our peak earning years these questions – if we consider them – are a big deal.
There's nothing like being on a seductive island to get me thinking about what I want.
At home I have a life that many would consider a success: a nice five-bedroom house in one of the best areas and neighborhoods for raising kids in Southern California. Our kids can walk and ride their bikes around the neighborhood safely and are known by many other families. We have a boat on the lake a mile down the road from our house – and three luxury cars, including one for the au pair. We have an au pair. We belong to our local synagogue and I have a leadership position. Our children attend religious school and are part of a Jewish community. We enjoy sunshine, great schools, pretty hills, bike lanes, quick access to the beach, fine dining and can buy just about anything you can imagine within a 10 minute radius. I have a preferred store for my kombucha and organic Lebanese-style stuffed grape leaves. We always have the latest model of iPhone and update our Mac laptops every few years. We take annual international vacations and have an impressive reserve of airline miles. Our kids have college funds with decent amounts of money in them. We have access to family. Our children grow up with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Emily and I have friends and a social life.
If Emily and I have done anything well together, it's building a life.
When I'm home, I'm grateful for it all. Driving from yoga to home in Westlake Village on a typical Wednesday morning, I'm often inspired by just how great we have it.
When I'm here, I wonder how much of all that do we REALLY need. It doesn't come cheap or easy. Life has a grind to it. I'm happy with what I do for work, but I'm not living out my higher calling. I'm trying to do something enjoyable and challenging in order to make considerably more money so I can stop doing it and switch to meaningful, but perhaps not lucrative occupations and live or at least spend a lot of time in places like this. I think it's the best plan. Some material ambition now in order to be spiritual and emotionally ambitious later seems like a good way to chase my dreams while doing right by my family.
At the same time, nothing is certain and life is short. I look at my Patmos dream house across the water – calling to me like Gatsby staring at the green light from Daisy's dock – and wonder if for $700,000 I could cut right to the chase and transform my life. Working remotely at my current salary, I could afford that house and at least part of the year, lead a completely different life. So tempting…..
I could even more easily afford life in Bali again which has a similar appeal to me – although less conducive to working remotely in my current job.
That said, the question really isn't as much about that house or even which magical, enjoyable place I could live – but is there a point where enough is good- maybe even amazing? Is it better to keep my eyes on the prize and live for a simpler tomorrow? Is it absurd to even consider abandoning a life well built? Or is it absurd to live for tomorrow when nothing's guaranteed? If there's a shot to live a dream, is the ambitious thing to seize it?
I understand the appeal of the American Dream and I've been pretty good at going after it. I also know it's not the only dream. There are many ways to live life.
Yesterday, Stefanos at Agriolivadi – not to be confused with the Stefanos with the taverna, apartment hotel and concessions at Meloi Beach – made the point that countries with large populations tend to be more callous about life. China, for example, with its 1.7 billion people doesn't mind locking people in their homes or perhaps taking large losses in war. Under Mao, starving people, disappearing them, putting them in work camps – these were all options on the table. However, not so for Greeks, Stefanos claimed. "There are only 10 million of us. We are small. We have heart. We care about each other."
I agree with Stefanos that size and the ability to relate on a human level has a correlation. However, I think culture plays a part too. On the Hofestede Scale of Cultural Dimensions, Greece rates a full 100 at Uncertainty Avoidance. As Hofetede Insights says, "Greeks need to have good and relaxing moments in their everyday life, chatting with colleagues, enjoying a long meal or dancing with guests and friends. Due to their high score in this dimension Greeks are very passionate and demonstrative people: emotions are easily shown in their body language."
Greeks do indeed have heart.
What is it worth to live in a place that builds "good and relaxing moments in their everyday lives"? What do you trade for it?
For many of the Greeks I talk to, Germans are their favorite foil. Not only do they resent that Germany sits in the drivers seat of the EU, but Germans are just well, German. Greeks find them stiff and cold - their values are less comprehensible and accessible to Greeks.
What I call complacency and ambition, Hofestede calls Femininity vs Masculinity (which I think should be renamed, but we'll go with it for now).
A high score (Masculine) on this dimension indicates that the society will be driven by competition, achievement and success, with success being defined by the winner / best in field – a value system that starts in school and continues throughout organisational life.
A low score (Feminine) on the dimension means that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A Feminine society is one where quality of life is the sign of success and standing out from the crowd is not admirable.
Unsurprisingly, Greece is a more Feminine society than Germany which is highly Masculine. Clearly, I come from a more Masculine society – only slightly less so than Germany – and find the more Feminine approach to life appealing.
On the other hand, everything has trade-offs. The Pfizer COVID vaccine was developed through a German-American collaboration. The Moderna vaccine was exclusively American. No vaccine was Greek. The world is not transformed by Greek technologies, led by Greek corporations or impacted (at least often) by Greek thought-leaders. Greek designed and manufactured weapons aren't saving Ukraine right now – but American and German ones are.
To be able to enjoy the sweet fruits of Greek life, you have to live under the umbrella of one or more ambitious, driven societies from whose technology and advances you can benefit. The angioplasty and stent that saved Nicholas and the chemotherapy saving Michaelis' mother didn't come from Greece or anyone living in a beautiful house on any island. Greece's strong alliances and ties to the EU and the United States give it options and a quality of life it would not have if it had to truly stand on its own.
While there are many ways to contribute to the world and make it better – some of the most impactful ones come from ambition and drive. They require a Masculine dimension. Would I, could I engage in real Tikkun Olam from a gorgeous, dream house on Patmos living the simple and relaxed life Michaelis so loves? Would I give the best of what I have to offer from such a relaxed and undemanding place? Would I be satisfied with my own contribution to the world if yoga and writing stayed the primary personal activities in my life?
Or maybe it's the other way around? Without the noise of America, the lack of errands around town, the two days a week I commute to the office and various bills and issues to attend – perhaps I would have the space to finally focus on the projects that matter most? Perhaps it would be easier to figure out how to airlift llamas to Nepal while sitting on my back patio overlooking the water than to try to fit it into the end of an exhausting day? Maybe I can build from the momentum started here and write everyday but instead of a building a blog, write one of the books or screenplays I've often imagined? Perhaps the Masculinity resides in the American and not solely within America itself?
If I could do the most meaningful work of my life – the more Greek Feminine value – would I also be living out my best – the more American Masculine value? Does it have to be a choice or could one support the other?
Or is this just my lust for that house and trepidation about leaving the island talking? It's hard to say.
For now, I can only conclude these questions will remain dangling – they can't be settled before I go home and face my life. But I'm going to pack them in my suitcase and take them with me. They could be instrumental in mapping out future options – maybe soon, maybe years from now. Either way, bringing more meaning to my life and daily occupations seems an inevitable trajectory for me. I can't go back to a hollow partnership and be happy. Whether Emily chooses to meet me by putting substance and support into our marriage, or we go our separate ways – there has to be more than what I left on March 19th. My life needs to gain richness and depth again – with or without her. Finding the balance – the sweet spot between complacency and ambition, Feminine and Masculine – is a destination I'm putting on my life map.
