2024W38: Making peace with 🇬🇷
2024W38: Making peace with 🇬🇷
I just came back from Greece to work through bad memories – confronting bad memories works.
If you only have 1 minute…
I just came back from Greece after going there because I don’t like it there.
The plan: go to where I suffered and create new, positive memories there.
The outcome: success ✅
Like with fears, confronting uncomfortable memories allows you to move on.
2022: I hate Greece
After spending the two most difficult summers of my life in 2021 and 2022 in Greece, I returned to Estonia – this time alone – everything about Greece.
Why is it so noisy everywhere that sleep is difficult?
Why can’t you flush toilet paper down the toilet?
Why are there mosquitos year-round, in your room?
Why is there trash everywhere?
Why is drinking the tap water risky?
Why is everyone around me okay with everything being broken and chaotic?
I was permanently underslept, failed to build a social life, got depressed, and focused on everything Greece wasn’t good at.
The sweltering sun had bleached the beauty out of everything else.
Being in the best relationship I had ever been in at the time didn’t help.
No matter how much my partner cared and supported me, it didn’t get through to me and help me out of my depression.
Worse yet, I was letting her down by being a total wreck of a person at the time.
That’s not the person who I wanted to be and thus we had to part ways, for both of us to live our best lives.
2024: Athens - Meteora - Karystos - Varkiza
This year I returned to visit all the places that hold meaning, with my new partner (the best way to make good memories):
Athens – because I had good memories there, the triangle between Omonoia, Syntagma, and Monastiraki still feels comfortable like Kalamaja in Tallinn.
I still needed to work for the first five days of the trip, and Athens was well-equipped enough for this. Despite being in an air-conditioned space most of the time, 31 degrees during the day do take their toll on the body, and concentrating on anything was difficult.
Meteora – a new place to visit, because I didn’t want to only retread on the steps of the past.
Nestled on top of pillars of stone, in the center of Greece, are the mountain monasteries of Meteora.
I try to avoid touristy spots as much as possible, but in this case it was totally worth it.
Karystos was next – more good memories, from before the two difficult summers and lots of exciting nature. It’s a great place to disconnect from the rest of the world and the mountains close by allow you to easily regulate how much you want to sweat.
Varkiza was left for last – the final boss, the place of suffering.
Seeing this bench again was painful – one reason was that at my worst, it was here where I wondered about what I was doing with my life every morning, before distracting myself with work.
A lot of painful memories came back all at once.
But with every passing minute, it got better and the focus shifted to enjoying the things the place has to offer, together with my partner.
In the end, we had two amazing days in Varkiza, and my brain does not associate pain with this place anymore 🚀
For now, I’m done with Greece – I don’t hold a grudge anymore, and after spending so much time there, visiting and experiencing other places seems like a better use of resources.
Takeaways
face your past so you can move on,
if something feels emotionally painful, then that’s where you need to look/go
it’s okay to feel your feelings, just don’t dwell on them – be sad for a minute and then move on, instead of consciously amplifying the feeling.