“A Leo is the king, yes this is true. But why? A Leo demands to be loved and adored but in return she will give you the whole world. That is why a Leo is King..or Queen.”
It should be noted that the Greeks are fond of astrology. My childlike appreciation for the mystic loves this about them. Leave your skepticism at the airport, my friends. Embrace Greece for what it is: loud, passionate, emotional and a thinking place – thinking out loud to be precise. The depth of thought, so freely accessible to people here, is expressed with no embarrassment. And therefore it’s the perfect hunting ground for the pensive mind of a storyteller.
For six months, Greece has served as an incubator for my meandering thoughts. I shared quite a few of the supporting stories for a while, but recently the words haven’t flowed as freely as the Greek stream of consciousness. I originally started ‘your little human’in expectation of the ups and downs of my career, or more accurately, a life out in the world. The current flow of humanity to Greece served as a focused lens to communicate through. It also acted as a companion to shield me from my own narcissism, as my Irish psyche describes the practice of blog writing in my life.
My issue recently has been the lack of contact I’m currently having with the very people I came here to work for, the people seeking refuge in Europe. Meeting upon meeting has been the pitfall of many roles I’ve had over the years and the humanitarian sphere appears to be no different. Therefore, I must go back to the beginning: writing about the ups and downs of my career out in this world.
“I want to hear about your life,” a friend told me, “write about that.”
“Ugh, do you really?” A monologue of encouragement followed.
So here I go. The overwhelming theme for my life over the months has been repeatedly trying to find home. Home can be a physical place, a routine, a state of mind or finding a member of your tribe. At times I’ve found all of these things in Greece, but I’ve lost all of them too. Since the 28th of March, I moved 20 times and 17 of those were in the first 5 weeks. I flew to Thessaloniki, Athens, Copenhagen, back to Athens, back to Thessaloniki, back to Athens, to Manchester, to Dublin and back to Athens again. Returning home to Ireland, I was greeted with a for sale sign in the garden of my family home and before my return flight to Greece, it became ‘sale agreed’. In the space of 14 hours, I managed to pack up my whole life. My tight schedule required me to push the mental anguish aside, but by 11 p.m. I was ready to crack.
For such an over-thinker, I often don’t process my own emotions in a timely manner. I can describe to you in a hundred different ways, using analogy and loquacious flair, how I feel about the mundane or how you might feel about your life. I can psychoanalyse on demand. But something large and unexpected comes along and my brain goes on a delayed timer. It’s even worse when my heart gets involved. Ever heard of Synesthesia? It can mean different things, but it’s commonly recognised as a meeting of the senses, thinking in colours or being able to visualise thought processes. I don’t know if I have it, but I know that when I can’t process my feelings my thoughts take on a colour filter.
In the past few months and weeks in particular, I’ve had to say good bye far too many times. I’ve lost colleagues, mentors, friends, soul connections and home often all rolled up in each person. But it isn’t until they’re gone that I realise all of these things. And so this Lion feels like she’s walked through an explosion in a paint factory. Constant re-calibration of what makes up your life is exhausting when you’re a social animal in the humanitarian sphere. When the answer to what makes up your life is always people, with names, you can find yourself slightly lost when you turn around and no one is behind you any more.
I could make comparisons to show how these experiences pale in significance to how it must feel when you’re fleeing war, when you’re being moved from place to place and when your family is dotted along the dangerous path from Kabul to Cologne. But this would be cheating on my part. I promised I would tell the truth about life as a humanitarian. Sometimes all you see are other humanitarians. Sometimes you have to share really close quarters with people you don’t know. Sometimes you walk into riots with these people. Sometimes you have to cry in front of them, because you heard a sad story or you had a bad day. Sometimes you want to kill each other because the bonding process happens at such speed. Sometimes you realise you want to keep them forever and that’s round about the time that they leave.
Collecting a tribe is a difficult thing to do. But I suppose if you give them the whole world, then they’re never that far away.
yourlittlehuman 