This is Greece

It had to come to this: Someone needed to organise a positive campaign, rebranding Greece not as the den of political corruption (which it can be, sure), but as a cradle of working, enterprising, friendly people who put their minds where their heart is and never forget that they're first and foremost "of Greek education", a humanist one that encompasses anyone who is willing to partake in it*. This is Magic. This is Greece.

People (Greeks mainly) like to complain that we should change from the inside before even thinking about the outside, about mere appearences (about how the country looks to foreigners visiting, maybe?) Yes, there's certainly a point there. But an organic change isn't possible without really looking the part. Think about it. If you have a bad habit, like gnawing your nails or constantly picking your nose in public and everyone looks at you doing it, are you likely to cut out the bad habit? It becomes part of who you are. The outside becomes the inside and gets incorporated into your being; it ends up defining you! Conversely think how picking the brightest garment in the wardrobe sometimes uplifts our mood when that is as flat as the floor.

If you try to stop looking like that, though, if you restrain yourself, if you consciously make an effort to look good, if only for the times when someone is looking at you or for a set time you decide to set, you tend to pick up the good habit and extend it from the public domain to the private one; from the outside to the inside. And you bring on change. Organic change. Just in a different way that only looks superficial at the very start... This is indeed the very start on the path to greater things, mark my words.

Images are powerful things. They travel with lightening speed and influence our brain instantly.  Let's use images to bring on that change from the outside to the inside in ourselves. Let's re-invent ourselves by remembering what good qualities we always had but we have forgotten; not the folklore we exported so much, but the true spirit we had in our souls. Let's start today! Let's indulge in the magic.

Read Stephen's article on the Elgin Marbles

More to discover: This is Greece 

*“So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.”~Isocrates, Panergyricus, 50, circa 380 BC (J. A. Freese Translation)