Siga, Siga. . .
I’ll be honest; I had a tough time coming up with something to write this week. I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired or thoughtful about anything. Lockdowns are coming back and I’m just feeling kinda stuck. So in my typical, endless social media scrolling, I came across this post on Instagram and it inspired me to write about one of the major differences between living in Greece and “life” in the US, though it’s certainly not unique to Greece.
The idea is that living life slowly is
IS T H E A C T U A L T H I N G
that makes life satisfying.
Of course, growing up in these United States of End Stage Capitalism, the idea of enjoying something simply for the sake of enjoying it is anathema. There has to be a reason, something productive that comes from it, a “why,” a dollar amount, or a risk-benefit analysis. It’s why you can’t not check your work email on vacation.
This blasphemous year of 2020 may have changed the way some Americans think about this concept. It certainly brought a lot of my own feelings about worth, work, and productivity to the fore. We’ve all been forcibly restrained by COVID-19, told by our government to stay home, slow down, don’t go out as much, limit contact with large groups. It has sent the economy into near-freefall. People are out of work, sick, starving, dying. It’s a shit situation. Heartbreak is the word that sticks with me for this dumpster fire of a year.
And yet. We’ve all been made to slow the fuck down. To recognize that certain limitations force us to see things that have been in front of us this whole time, but that we were just too goddamned busy and distracted to see. Greeks have a lot of idiomatic sayings about this idea, the most common though might be “siga, siga” which translates directly as “slow, slow.” I know it doesn’t sound very profound, mostly because it’s not, really.
THE IDEA THAT RUSHING TO DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, ACTUALLY LESSENS THE VALUE OF DOING WHATEVER THAT THING IS.
If the waves are too big that day, just relax and gather pebbles and make a design on the beach.
EXAMPLES: Going to a coffee shop to see a friend? What’s the rush? Sit, enjoy a coffee and company for two hours, then carry on with your day. Going window shopping downtown? Get dressed up, make a day of it, go for a cocktail or coffee with a friend (coffee with friends is a big deal). Holidays coming up? Go to your ancestral village three hours outside of Athens and spend the weekend with your whole extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins. Going to an island for vacation? Take the overnight ferry instead of the 45 minute plane. “Siga, siga” is the reason that restaurants in Greece won’t automatically bring you your check at the end of your meal. In fact, if they do, it’s considered rude. Rushing is rude. It’s inhumane. It’s unthinkable.
Stop and match your nails to the roses.
Of course, haters will say “siga, siga” is why the Greek economy failed and why the Greek government is totally shambolic. They’ll say that’s why public works projects never get finished and why privately built structures are left half-finished for years on end. I’d really rather not get into all of that at the moment, or ever really. It’s not germane to this blog post. I’m sorry I even brought it up. MOVING ON!
Some of this “siga, siga” mentality boils down to tradition, and certainly a portion of it has to do with privilege, but a lot of it is built in to the Greek psyche, regardless of socio-economic status. Even in this modern 21st century world, some businesses close in the afternoon so shopkeepers can go home, eat lunch with their family, rest, and come back and open up shop for the evening when folks are out for dinner and an evening stroll. It’s about living a life, not just watching it pass by as you run from appointment to appointment.
Like most elder millennials, I worshipped “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and especially the oft-quoted line “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't slow down once in a while you might miss it” really sticks with me. Ferris would’ve gotten “siga, siga.”
Thanks for going on this slow ride with me,
xo Anastasia