For Those Moments in the Woods

KL

"Oh if life were made of moments -- even now and then a bad one -- 

but if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one."

You want me to pick one moment to define the entire trip? Surely you can't be serious.

I've spent the last few days laboring over this question. In search of inspiration, I sought the opinion of a certain Greek girl who had shared a lot of the experience with me. She responded, "Think of the moment you said, 'that's the reason I won't regret [having taken] this trip.'"

Which moment was that? I'm trying to remember all the sights, smells, and tastes; all of the walks, the conversations; and more notably, all the moments that made my jaw drop.

But I think the defining moment would be the one in which I picked my jaw back up again. 

Travelers have no trouble experiencing awe in Greece. It's a rather awesome place, especially to foreigners. Everyone walks around the Acropolis and marvels at the manifestations of Greece's exotic culture, but then they leave again, eager to take pictures of the next awesome place. We, by comparison, had the benefit of sticking around. After the initial magic had dissipated, most of us discovered a much more profound relationship with the country. As with interpersonal relationships, we began to see beyond the flashy exterior to find the real beauty beneath (or perhaps just a subtler version of the exterior, considering that we still hadn't quite become entrenched in the country's political atmosphere and economic drama).

I wrote often about feeling or striving to feel like a local. When our group first arrived, we were just like every other tourist group, pausing to snap photos of anything with mass, but as the days progressed, we became comfortable in the new setting, and preferred to live in the moments, rather than attempting to document them before they disappeared.

Local v. Tourist is not defined by the amount of pictures one takes, but it is the most quantifiable example. In truth, the way we carried ourselves had fundamentally shifted, and so we weren't gawking at the sights, but we weren't taking them for granted either. We had found a sweet spot in the middle (where sweet spots so often are), and the moments ceased to be fleeting.

In theatre, they say that one can only start to act once the script is memorized and out of hand. Getting the lines down is the easy part -- the challenge is then to make the play yours. Picking up my jaw is a very similar experience to being off-book: I know this place; I'm no longer taking it at face value. It becomes, if you'll excuse the cliché, a living, breathing city, rather than a collection of things at which to stare, or to maintain the theatre metaphor, a series of words that flow straight from one's eyes to one's mouth, bypassing both the brain and the heart on their way out.

I've taken a piece of Athens home with me, and I know that a piece of me remains there. Both are profoundly connected. I've learned to see Greece through the eyes of both a tourist and a local. I learned to see the present -- not just the past symbolized by monuments, but to actually be present for the present: The moment that the moments became mine. That is why I won't regret having taken this trip.

"Let the moment go... Don't forget it for a moment, though.

Just remembering you've had an 'and' when you're back to 'or' 

makes the 'or' mean more than it did before."