#philotimo

Chapter 10 is up!

Philotimo

“Elder Paisiou aptly defined philotimo as ‘that deep-seated awareness in the heart that motivates the good that a person does. A philotimos person is one who conceives and enacts eagerly those things good’.”

Greece has become a home away from home for me after the several months that I spent living in a picturesque little coastal town just north of Athens called Chalkida as well as island hopping my way around the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. Greece has all the superlatives my writer’s vocabulary can conjure — white-washed architecture crowned with turquoise domes, cuisine with the perfect balance of simplicity and flavor, therapeutic seas that melt away your cares and impending sunburn, a rich history that goes back practically to the beginning of time. But Greece is so much more than just that postcard image, and its word shows the incredible depth of the Greek people.

Philotimo is a Greek word that isn’t easily translated because it’s a virtue with so many different facets. It’s integrity, honor, pride, duty, courage, respect, generosity, gratitude, goodness. Philotimo is a noun comprised of two root words — “filos” which means “friend” and “timi” which means “honor”. To honor your friend. It’s always doing the right thing without expecting anything in return except love and friendship. Philotimo is embedded in the DNA of the Greeks and felt as a responsibility to one’s family, to one’s community, even to Greek history. The famous Greek philosopher, Thales, said, “Philotimo to the Greek is like breathing. A Greek is not a Greek without it.”

Philotimo explains the steadfast and graceful way the Greeks have continuously welcomed refugees by the hundreds of thousands to their country since 2015. Greece has its fair share of economic problems with a crushing debt crisis and high unemployment, but the attitude of most people I personally met and all the way to President Prokopis Pavlopoulos is an understanding that humanity always comes first even, and maybe especially,  in trying times of uncertainty. “I say we Greeks teach and will always teach because we have proved that there is no obstacle, in spite of the crisis, to doing our duty based on our ancient heritage,” Pavlopoulos said at a seminar on the refugee crisis, referring to how Greek culture has influenced their reaction to issues of migration. He’s referring to Philotimo.

The Ancient Greeks were the first Europeans to use an alphabet system and, by doing so, created a steady word base for other Western languages to borrow from.

The language has an amazing number of word families filled with phobias, manias and philes to make it easier to guess words though translation has not been a simple matter.

For instance, “philotimo” and “philoxenia” have been considered words among the most complicated to translate, but the BBC tried to crack through the mystery during its presentation of love-inspred words from around the world on Valentine’s Day.