Initium est salutis notitia peccati

Coming back from Greece I'm rather disappointed than anything else. Sure the weather is nice and the country is still beautiful. However, this economic collapse has affected everybody. People are unhappy and they don't feel safe anymore; many of them go to the central square of Athens to protest and communicate their fears with fellow citizens.

I had the chance to talk extensively with one of them. This girl is called Ioli, which is such a beautiful name, she was a journalist, 25 years old, quite educated in the social sense and to my opinion an active citizen. Ioli, this 25 years old girl is 7 or 8 months without a job. Right now she is at a point in her life that she is not able to pay her rent and she decided to work as waitress in order to survive. I consider it quite depressing that young people have to do something totally different from what they studied just to be able to survive.

Ioli is very angry. Ioli is depressed. Ioli shouts at the central square. Everything seems burned around her and all her generation in complete despair.

In these kind of situations that someone hits rock bottom there is always some sort of optimism that its source is the fact that its situation cannot become any worse. Hope is a very strong drive for everyone and I totally respect its power. However, I wonder if that is the case for the young Ioli and its generation. My pessimism comes from the fact that Ioli was blaming the older generations or the politicians for the problems that she is now facing. But wait a minute who are these people? Are they any foreigners that have invaded the country and have done everything to cause harm ? No, we are the same people, we share the same culture, more or less the same believes and blaming each other can't do any good to the current situation.

I think the major problem of modern Greece has to do with responsibility and who will take the blame. It's kind of absurd that this country that has this great past which full of very risky decisions now is full of people that they want to defer anything for later, and what preserves their sanity is having someone else to blame for their own shortcomings. I think that's the point we are mistaken; we have failed to recognize the problem. We are the problem; and I know this is the hardest thing to get and accept but only when we manage to accept that truth will find a way to swim towards the surface again. We are responsible, we created this situation, we need to take action, to get educated, not to steal ourselves or our children; it's dead hard but it's so true.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation after all