A pessimistic air seems to have engulfed our world, with increased levels of stress due to unemployment, financial hardship, and health and relationship issues. People express the meaninglessness of their lives through addictions—to television, sex, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, the internet, etc. Depression and anxiety are on the rise, leading to record numbers of prescriptions being written for antidepressants. Impatience and aggression are also on the rise, as more and more people believe their individual needs are more important than those of others or society’s as a whole. Today we see that despite being in an increasingly networked and connected world, too many people feel disconnected and untrusting—of neighbors, coworkers, leaders of organizations and, especially, of government.
Despite being able to choose amongst so many consumer goods, people are actually feeling overwhelmed with all the choices that are available. Unfortunately, society has told us that we can achieve happiness through consumption. Society has made us think if only . . . “If only I had a bigger house, a better car, more money, and a better job, I would be fulfilled.” But more choices and personal freedoms have led to higher expectations, which in turn have led to never being satisfied with what we have! We think we want more, but when we get it, it is not enough. We still want more. “Enough” becomes a moving target. And we spend so much time working to pay for things we don’t really want, let alone need. In the pursuit of the “if only,” we have sacrificed our relationships, our health, and our sanity.
We’ve also been taught that we should expect to have it all and we should expect to have it now. In other words, we are driven by instant gratification—and justify it with thoughts like just put it on credit, there’s no need to earn the money today, and pay for it later. Not just individuals but cities, states, and nations have embraced these beliefs. So is it any real shock that, one day this way of thinking would be challenged by the consequences, including unsustainable debt? As this global issue unfolds, accelerates, and intensifies, and the stark reality of the economic crisis sinks in, is there any reason to wonder why more and more people are asking seriously about the meaning of life?
Even the relentless pursuit of pleasure and power has shown itself to be short-lived because pleasure and power are founded on the same “if only I had more” logic. Left unchecked, these pursuits comprise a vicious cycle and manifest themselves as an endless—and joyless—undertaking, much like the one experienced by the Greek hero Sisyphus, who was ordered by the gods to push a big rock uphill only to see it slip out of his hands in the very last moment and roll down the hill once more.
There is something deeper happening in our world. The real crisis behind our current economic crisis is the Crisis of Meaning, which affects all aspects of our lives: We’ve lost the authentic connection with others. We’ve lost the ability to engage with the deeper purpose of our lives. We’ve lost the ability to embrace the fullness of life with enthusiasm, energy, and joy.
The Good News!
The good news about this Crisis of Meaning is that it has forced us to ask better questions and reassess our lives and priorities. It has forced us to ask, “How can we live more meaningful lives?” It’s a question that gets us back to the core of our being—to the essence of our humanness. It’s a universal question that’s been asked and pondered for thousands of years. Almost twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato also considered this question and proclaimed, “Man—a being in search of meaning.”
Our Backgrounds
We, too, were examining our lives and asking the same meaning-focused question. We both grew up in North America and adopted the traditional Western values of hard work and “the pursuit of happiness.” We spent many years as leaders, professors, and writers in the field of innovation management, helping people in both business and public service generate ideas and plans for new initiatives based on our book, The Seeds of Innovation. It was interesting work but somehow, at the end of the day, we both felt that something was missing: there was too much “faster, better, cheaper”; too much chasing the “next best thing”; and too much head and not enough heart. So we began to shift to the human side of work and life with the publication of our book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts. Our work was successful, yet we still questioned what was really fulfilling and meaningful to us, our clients, their customers, and, importantly, society as a whole. So it only seemed natural for us to embark on our own odyssey in search of an answer . . .
The Land of Philosophers
Because Greece is the land of philosophers and since Alex just happens to come from a long line of Greeks, we felt that it would be a great place to pursue our odyssey. We traveled many times to Greece, well before its recent economic crisis began, to research and experience what eventually became the new paradigm introduced in this book. We soon realized that much of what we had learned over the years had grown in importance as the country’s crisis unfolded and intensified.
Greece is undergoing tremendous change right now—economically, socially, politically, and psychologically. Like other countries, Greece borrowed too much and spent too much, leading to high and unsustainable debt. This overspending, combined with a lack of oversight for public funds and also corruption and tax evasion, was a signal that the Greeks had drifted away from their traditional core values. As a small country, unable to print more money, Greece faces a challenging future as the nation’s leaders seek to stabilize the economy and restore public trust and confidence.
On our own personal odyssey, we wanted to go beyond the common images of Greece to understand the deeper character and spirit of the Greek people, to understand their attitudes toward life and, of course, to share in their ageless wisdom. We wanted to understand how the Greeks were coping with, surviving, and even in some cases, thriving during this period of stress and uncertainty, so that we could share these lessons with others who may be facing similar circumstances in their own countries and lives. We wanted to learn how the Greeks were finding meaning in their everyday lives and work despite the chaos around them. Although our lives may appear to be very different from the indigenous people who live in the traditional Greek villages of today, at the basic human level they are the same. We are all trying to live the meaningful life.
Greece is a very special and sacred place. When we think of Greece, we often think of the whitewashed houses with blue doors and shutters painted to match the colors of the Greek national flag (and some say, reflecting the colors of the sea or sky). We think of the many islands where tiny fishing boats lay docked in the forefront of sandy beaches and vast rolling hills filled with olive groves. We think of the laughter of people as they gather to dine and dance with large groups of family and friends. And of course, we think of the origin of the Olympic Games.
Greece has also been honored as the birthplace or cradle of Western civilization. The Greeks were leaders who built the foundations in many areas, such as architecture, mathematics, medicine, music, politics (including democracy), science, theater, and many others, which established the way and quality of life that we experience and enjoy to this very day. Many of us are familiar with the stories of the Greek gods, such as Apollo, Atlas, Dionysus, Hades, Hercules, Hermes, Poseidon, and Zeus, and Greek goddesses like Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Gaia, Hera, Hestia, and Hygeia. The ancient Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, Thales, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hypatia, and others, are well-known for their advanced views of the world and contributions to modern thinking. (The early “pre-Socratic” Greek philosophers, like Heraclitus, were contemporaries of the Indian spiritual teacher Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, and the Chinese philosophers Lao-tzu and Confucius; all offered complementary, if not alternative, perspectives on the meaning