Minimalism: Not just another trend but a way of life.

It's been roughly a week since the day i decided to go minimalist. I started decluttering my house and at the end of the second day of my minimalism challenge it dawned on me that maybe i should expand this project to other aspects of my life as well. So, in the spirit of less is more, i thought of other ways that abundance is messing with my life. If you find objects distracting, then think of what social media does to your life. Sacrificing a significantly big amount of time being on Facebook instead of spending it on a more productive and qualitive way, is hurting our lives without even noticing it most of the times. It's one thing using social media for business purposes and another for killing our spare time.

I believe everybody has heard of the following quote : "The first person you think of in the morning, or the last person you think of at night, is either the cause of your happiness or your pain." Now, let me say that this is so 90s! I mean it's 2015, if you are between 15 to 45 years old, chances are your first thought in the morning and your last at night is Facebook. Unless, of course, other stuff is happening in your life that are substantially more important than social media's addiction, hence you are putting all of your energy in dealing with your issues. But, if that is not the case, and you fall into the first category, i want you to take a moment and picture this. Let's say Facebook (F for short) is the girl or guy you are in a romantic relationship with. F is fun, knows people, is a music fan etc. S/he can be really addictive over time and has the ability to mess with your mind and psyche. Sounds like a passionate love affair eh? Pretty much the same thing, feelings-wise.

However, when you come to a point where you feel like you need to take a break away from F, you realise few things. S/he is more like a gossip chick who constantly compares your life to other's and, at times, deceives you into thinking everyone else is better off than you. You're often led to narcissistic behavior, trying to show off in search for validation through F's likes and comments. Not to mention your intruded privacy and F's needy nature which many times destroys creative activities you could be part of if you didn't spend your precious time exclusively on her. Last but not least, F's alieanating you from the offline world, a world that has so much beauty, if only you could take your eyes off of F to notice that.

The key is simplicity. Do not fall into toxic habits that are able to ruin your peace of mind. Excessiveness is never the right choice. So, in that spirit, i resolved to minimizing my time online starting with one day per week till i come to a point where i'm having a monthly "anti-social" week, which is a week per month away from social media. Because, you know, it's not just F who's demanding. There's also T (aka Twitter), I (aka Instagram) and other millennial crushes. I challenge you to come join me in this! Go out and do some fun stuff with your friends, family or loved ones and leave your phone at home. If you want to take pictures just take a camera with you. And for all those who claim they want their phone with them for safety reasons, well, then one person of your company should carry his phone with him, but make sure it is turned off the whole time and you only use it when in need. Let's try make the most of our "anti-social" day or week!

Distracted from distraction

by distraction

T.S Eliot

The trip of a lifetime

No one said it is easy to change but I don’t believe in giving up on something that can make a difference or it can make other peoples lives easier. The immigration story goes back a long time  and especially the Greek immigration to Australia has set her starting day back in the early 1900.

By the turn of the 19^th century there were about 1000 Greeks in Australia, migration accelerated from about 1900, so much so that by the start of World War 1 numbers had doubled to just over 2000. On the eve of the second innings over 10,000 Greeks had settled in Australia. The first to come here were the Kastellorizan who became the largest regional group in Perth, Darwin, Port Pirie and North Queensland, and made up 13% of the Australia-wide Greek born population by 1940. Later on it was the Macedonian Greeks that started to arrive in 1923 and because of their agrarian background chose to bypass the café game and settle in the hinterland of WA and VIC. It wasn’t until the Depression years that internal migration brought them in small numbers to NSW. After World War 2 however, most of the Greeks entering the country were Macedonians. Moreover, in the 1950s the Kytherians made up about 50% of the Greek population of NSW while the Greek settlement of northern NSW was well over 75% Kytherian. Their numbers built through the process of chain migration, making settlement around here very much a family affair; everyone was connected in some way, or became connected. Australia's post World War 2 mass migration policy brought Greeks from all regions of their devastated country, particularly Macedonia, displacing the earlier islander migration chain. By 1954 the number of Greeks in Australia had doubled to 26,000 and by 1961 had increased another threefold to 77,000, but by the late 1960s only about 10% of them could be found outside the metropolitan areas. Numbers had peaked by 1971 when the total stood at 160,200, 35% of whom were Greek Macedonians, making them the dominant regional group by far, while the combined islander group had shrunk to 15% of the total.

Years later Greek migration to Australia had been negligible since the post-war wave ended, indeed most traffic had been the other way. But since 2010, there has been a significant surge in the number people arriving in Australia from Greece on temporary and permanent visas, including a seven-fold increase in people on student visas and a four-fold rise in family migration. There is an estimated number of about 8,000 people that have arrived in Victoria since 2010 according to a report released by the Australian Greek Welfare Society. Apparently it is the largest steam-about 60%- has been returning Greek Australian expatriates and their families, including many who left as children or are Australian citizens by descent. In 2011 another report form Census recorded 99,937 Greece-born living in Australia and 378,300 Australians claimed Greek ancestry. Right now the Greek population is concentrated in Victoria (42,8%) and New South Wales (33,5%), particularly in the greater metropolitan areas of Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne, sister city to Thessaloniki, is often described as the third largest “Greek city” in the world and is an important overseas centre of Hellenism.

These waves of migration to Australia helped a lot the economy on both sides. Greece is Australia’s 70^th largest merchandise trading partner and now with the new wave of migration it is going to help it even more. Two-way merchandise trade in 2011-12, totalled $188 million; exports to Greece totalled $30 million, while goods imported from Greece were worth $158 million. Two-way services trade between Greece and Australia is heavily weighted in Greece’s favour. Services exports from Australia were worth $48 million in 2011-12, while services imports from Greece totalled $307 million. Our services trade consists mainly of personal travel excluding education, government services and business-related travel. Greece has a population of 10,7 million and GDP of US$ 255 billion (2012 IMF forecast). The Greek economy grew on average by almost 4% per year between 2003 and 2007, but has almost a quarter of GDP in the prolonged recession which followed the global financial crisis since 2009. Based on statistical reports 30% of the Greek population lives below the poverty line (less than 6,000 euros income annually) and unemployment rose to 26,8% in March 2013. 

Going minimalist

“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.” , says English writer Aldous Huxley on his last book , Island. If I was to describe that quote in only one word, that would be timeless. Island was published in 1962. Fifty three years later, that statement seems to be still valid. Consumer culture contributes to turning people into collectively psychotic zombies, whose utmost ambition in life is to own a significantly large amount of stuff or the money they can purchase that stuff with.

Modern culture's philosophy is “the more you have, the more successful you are”. Hence, your social status has everything to do with your possessions. Among all species, humans are the only who possess the desire for prestige. We do not share that characteristic with other species. Social status exists only in humans, not animals.People are losing themselves in their everyday struggle to pursue that prestige. They engage themselves in acting ways to acquire it, so somewhere down that prestige-hunting road they lose their identity- they simply become what modern society indicates them to be – welltuned robots. And that fact would be just fine if it didn't interfere with both our psyche and the enviromental prosperity. Our need for more leads to overconsumerism which has a horrific impact on our enviroment. Yet, nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care – and that is exactly where the system relies on. Our ignorance, naivity and apathy. As the CEO of Prism Communications put it once, “children are evolving consumers”. Ever since the day we were born, we have been long nourished the idea that having more, brings us happiness. However, our greediness brings us anxiety, depression, sense of unequality and so much more side effects of the disease called consumer capitalism.

What we need to realise is that we are hurting ourselves and our enviroment in the process of impulsive consumerism. We are trained to be dissatisfied with what we already have so now we must unlearn what we have been programmed to believe since birth. Less is more. More freedom, more personal, enviromental, even financial health. Spend your money on meaningful activities rather than on stuff which are unlikely to be used ever after the day you bought them. I myself resolved to go minimalist too. I'm getting rid of my JICS (Just In Case Stuff), things that I don't necessarily need or I will ever. Also, I am going to declutter my house by donating clothes and shoes that I longer wear, and also, by throwing away things I have absolutely no clue why I am still holding on to. 

Next time you feel like you want to buy something ask yourself first if you really need it. Remember that the less stuff you own, the less your stuff owns you. Set yourself free. The point here is not to be cheap, but rather substantially whole and integral.

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. 

You can’t consume much if you sit still

and read books.

Aldous Huxley

We can do it

We can’t help everyone but everyone can help someone. You are going to have some kind of superpowers to be able to change the world or you have, somehow, unlocked the mystery of reading and controlling minds so you can change everyone’s perspective about life in one day. No one said that change is an easy thing to do and no one said that is impossible. You can’t change the world by yourself but you can start by helping someone. Does anyone remember the movie “Pay it forward”? Why can’t we do the same thing as human beings? Why can’t we start helping others that doesn’t just concern our benefit but their benefit as well? We always try to “help” other people where in reality we only helping ourselves. We learn from a young age how to compete with others instead of working together. We live in a competiveness era and we learn that as soon as we walked into that classroom from the first day. They showed us a world full of competition and war. We can wake up very easily from that and we can begin a new life in a new world with understanding and happiness, with love and compassion, with supporting and carrying. We can look at other people and they can see you as their friend and family. We have been bombarded by the media and the television and we got scared to open and communicate with other people. With thoughts connecting with other thoughts comes our first big realization, we are not only 

connecting with our physical round but in a mental and spiritual way as well. We can create this communication between us and see that it is more prosperous if we all stick together like one nation, like one civilization, like one planet. We can start helping this change of our lives because we can do it.

Conspiracy theorists

What you are about to read is a true story and happened in front of me just a couple of days ago at my workplace. As some of you know I work at a coffee shop in North Sydney and there are a lot of benefits working in a coffee shop, one of them is that you get the chance to meet a different variety of interesting people, as everyone is interesting as human beings cause everyone has a nice story behind him to tell, and by talking to them and learning their experiences and the different way of thinking everyone has is something I am very keen on. One thing that dragged my attention so much that I cannot take out of my mind for the last couple of days is that a girl came into the shop doing some charity work to help find a cure for cancer. I have to say at this point that I have nothing against charity work and I embrace them and I am proud of them every time they cross my path in this journey of life but the reaction that my cousin got out of this was unexpected for me. We all know about cancer and possibly the majority of us has at least one person in their family with cancer disease. However, that girl walked down the stairs and told my cousin Chris if he would like to donate some money to the charity, and as I know Chris he doesn't care about the money but when he told the girl that they already have found the cure for cancer she replied straight away to him, “are you a conspiracy theorist?”. When I heard that the only thing I did was laugh. I couldn't find another more polite way to react at this

. There are so many people out there that their consciousness level is asleep and we need to wake them up. Why we are a conspiracy theorists and what does that even mean? Can you not see what is happening in front of your eyes? Can you not see what games the big corporations are playing between them, changing their money from one bank to another? Can you not see how each and every one of us are playing their game? Until when are we going to kid ourselves around and live in our own bubble? Until when are we going to keep looking with closed eyes and listening with deaf ears? I believe that the human brain can be awaken once more and make a turn into this world cause we have been played for so many years and we have been told so many lies from our governments. A Greek singer, Notis Sfakianakis, in his latest interview, after the interviewer told him that he brings her down with that information replied to her, “You don’t want to know your enemy? You don’t want to know what your enemy is capable of so you can be able to defeat him at any time? Would you prefer if I pat your back or do you prefer learning the truth?”. I think we had enough of this!! I had, and I am not going to stop until I do something about it!! I can only try, and I will, to speak the truth and the joke that we have been living in!! I won’t stop until something happens and even then I am not going to stop preventing this thing from happening!!! We can once more reach our highest peak of our pineal gland and see clear what is being played with our lives!! We are not talking about a game that we are going to have one winner but we are talking about a few families that are actually playing us like cards and controlling our life and our future!!!

There are three classes of people. Those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who don’t see. Leonardo Da Vinci

Why should we give millennials a chance?

Yeah, actually, why? That's what I asked myself this morning after reading the news over a hot cup of coffee.

This generation does not stand up for anything. Even if there's a group of them that does stand up, their voice is so weak – it's more like a whisper – so unlike to be heard, unless you pay attention and really listen to it. The majority of generation Y just does not give a damn about anything but social media, fashion, television, relationships, and boyband breakups. Of course, as some of you might say, that's a result of how you've been raised- you weren't born ignorant- you grew up to be one. This statement is partly true. Unless your family has tought you respect and manners, nobody should really expect these virtues from you. Once you, the ignorant millennial kid, will interact with other people and show your lack of kindness and integrity, remember that they do not know your background, and most likely won't tolerate your attitude.

I think Gen Ys are worse than the Gen Xs. Gen Ys are hypocrites. They put their hipster mask on and act like world peace activists, openminded people with strong personalities and much more spiritually evolved individuals than their ancestors. However, when the right time comes, that mask is put down and they show their real self which is no other than a racist, insecure and complex human being who just wants to be left alone while enjoying his fancy Starbucks coffee and taking pictures of it so that he puts it on Instagram minutes later. They don't let reality in, they're too fragile to look around and realize what's going on because that will require action and they just do not want to care. They're just fine inside their cynical bubble.

To be completely honest here, I'm a cynic too. A huge one actually. “Scratch any kind of cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist”, George Carlin said once. So, how can you not possibly be a cynic in such a harsh world? There's a certain picture in your mind of how the world should really be and when you compare that picture with reality the least you can get is disappointed. There's no cure for that, i'm highly convinced that i'm gonna be let down by humanity my whole life, but unlike the rest of you i'll give it a shot, i'll try to make a difference where I can and the way I can. What helps a cynic do that, try make a difference, what helped me specifically do that, was having people around me that just don't give up. They do not give up on me, they do not give up on their dreams, they do not give up on that picture I told you about few lines ago. In my life, Tim is one of them. I've never seen him lose his spirit over a handful of setbacks and pitfalls. Another thing I love about him is that he doesn't count his words, if he feels something is wrong he states it out. You'd be surprised of how many times he scolded me because, due to my cynical nature, I crossed some lines. If we were comic heroes I'd most definitely be the villain while Tim would be the soft-hearted hero. And you know what happens to villains right? Eventually, they come around or end up dead. Well, there's a third option, where you have sequels but that fact doesn't really help me come across my point at the moment!

Anyway, you have to think about that. If you call someone an ignorant, you just called him a name, you didn't solve anything. What it takes to beat a bad attitude that is for someone to genuinely care. Tim cares. His passion for humanity restoration can be contagious even to people like me. Hopefully, everyone has a Tim in his life. Let's just stop our generation's reputation, the so called “why bother” generation.

Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitudes.

It's having the right attitudes that's hard.

Roert M. Pirsig

Two sides

Oh man what a day?! You know when they say that today is one of those days? Well today it was! Have you ever got that feeling that you are so close to explode cause everything is going wrong at that moment of your life, and I am saying at that moment because they are actually moments. Time is irrelevant. We are not living in a clock time but in real time and life usually has its moments. The part where the depth of our strength kicks in is at those moments when everything starts going to hell. We often say that we had enough but did we? Did we have enough of this or is this the easy excuse for not pushing ourselves hard to get through it. Every time you get into a moment like this the only thing you can do is just take in the chin! Embrace that moment cause it’s a good lesson about to be learned. When you find yourself in that moment follow those three steps, take a deep breath, get up, and get over it! Only when you push yourself to the limit you break through the barrier that keeps you behind. Break through this barrier and you will achieve the possibility of discovering a new "you" in yourself. You will discover that there is more in you that you think you know. Everyone is hiding a strong willed and powerful person inside of him. When you break through and you reach that point in your life you start seeing things more clearly and more methodically. You see opportunities rising in front of you and you feeling the revolutionary ideas coming to you. The moment you break through the barrier you start thinking in a different way. A way of trying to make everything happen at the same time. You create a system that work so well organised not only for your benefit but for the benefit of the others around you as well. Don’t be afraid of pushing yourself to the limits cause that’s when you start the transformation of your inner being into something unimaginable. You can do anything in this world and the only thing that is holding you back is you! There is no one better than you because you are a wonderful and unique person. Turn that moment into the evolution of yourself and make this world yours because you are writing this story. You are driving the bus towards your faith. You are creating your future. There are always two sides in our acts and these are staying back or moving forward. I choose moving forward!