Between Two Worlds: The Truth About Being Greek Growing Up in America

There exists a feeling and emotion so deep in the veins of the people of the Greek (and likely any culture’s) diaspora in the respective countries that they grew up in that is so beyond emotions defined by words.  

Admittedly as a Pisces, and maybe just the deep and highly emotional woman I am…I lean towards despair when I feel it. 

How could I wake up in Greece one day, and the US the next?

How could I hear my mother tongue around me, and be able to use it so freely everywhere I went, and now only speak it to a few fellow Greeks in the US? (not to mention the Greek language is dying in the Greek diaspora of America, but perhaps I’ll elaborate in the future)

How could I fully be and express my Greek mentalities with people who actually agree and understand, fully attuned to my daily life here, to return to the US and immediately feel like I’m moving “too slowly” again, with the urgency of scheduling appointments and “getting back to it”.

So at home in the country of my roots in so many ways, yet never FULLY a native, and neither the feeling of belonging in the country I grew up in?  

Yet, THE reason I feel “other” in both the land I grew up in and the land of my roots is also the reason I CAN savor and enjoy the beauty of my roots in a deeper way.  

What Greeks call “kathimerinotita” or “daily life” holds simplistic magic that only an outside perspective can savor in quite the same way.  

Coffee isn’t just a drink, but a pillar of our culture.

Meeting for kafe, socializing with friends and loved ones is non-negotiable.  Greeks can work 6 days a week, and they will still get coffee on their day off.  Or hell, even after work!  

Timelines and routines aren’t so strict.  Weekdays often don’t start before 10am.  8pm is still considered afternoon.  5-10 minutes late is still on time to us.  I’ve shown up FORTY minutes late to an appointment only to be greeted with (in Greek, of course), “ah, you just ran a little late…”.   

To them, it’s not a big problem.  We will get where we’re going when we get there.  To people in the US, it’s practically unheard of! 

Work and routines come first, socializing needs to be scheduled weeks in advance, and it might still get cancelled because your friend needs to “hermit”.  

People genuinely want to help you.  Or at least connect you to someone who will.  Visiting an island for the first time where their nephew lives?  They will call them right there and make sure he takes you out to coffee.  Better yet, he may even offer you a stay in his home. 

Meeting a local who gave you directions?  They’ll invite you to have dinner with their family.  

Cross by the yiayia (grandmother) that socializes by her window every evening with her neighbors a few times, and she will start praying for you to find a husband and offering you sweet treats she made.  (This may or may not be based on a true story)  

My landlord in Syros, where I run my Greek retreats, regularly cooks for me and shares a beer with me most evenings when I rent his apartment. 

It is customary that a taverna offers you a sweet treat or post-dinner shot of liqueur. 

Hospitality, warmth, openness, and living more presently is so baked into the culture.  To them it is human nature, and to us, it’s everything that distinguishes Greeks from any other culture, and makes us so proud of our roots. 

The people and economy struggle. I enjoy its magnificence with the opportunities afforded to me by a life in a country outside our roots, at the cost of the feeling that I lack belonging and an understanding of who I “really” am.

While I often feel despair over it, this year, it evolved to coexist with an overwhelming wave of gratitude for the unintelligible emotions I get to experience.  A beautiful “problem” with a richness transcending human understanding that requires me to feel more than I can describe, therefore making me more alive than if I had the clear answer.  I’m more engaged to nurture the roots of the people who made the courageous journey to an unfamiliar land in pursuit of a better life, before they even knew who I was, while I continue to reap the benefits of their courage decades later, beyond their physical existence in their legacy that ripples on.

In this, I realize it’s not merely figuring out which land mass feels more like “home”.  It’s the price of carrying the emotions and the decisions of lives that came before you, and continuing a courageous legacy that simultaneously evolves through you.  Undefinable because it still lives and breathes with you, like the whispers of your ancestors who still savor the life they created through their DNA that remains in you. 

Cheers to the diversity of my existence, not only as a human being but a transcendent soul. 

Cheers to both the lands I call home for creating such a complexity in me, which ultimately results in my return to the understanding that home was never a place, but within me…forged and forever impacted by the beautiful ones that came before me, and that I have chosen to keep alive with every breath and beat of my heart.