Probably the island that suffered the most conquests in the history of the world, Cyprus has been once more attacked by another mighty ruler: The King of Money. A new word has recently made its grand, albeit bitter entry into our vocabulary. Haircut. No, not a simple haircut that one experiences regularly at one's hairdresser's. It is the process where by the Eurogroup put their hands into the pockets of the bank depositors. People who worked all their lives to save money. The chef who spent his life in the steamy kitchens of Australia in order to save money for him and his family. The paraplegic victim of an accident given the money as a compensation by his insurance. And yes, that Russian millionaire too. It does not matter who. No one was spared. Not a Robin-Hood-style robbing but a straightforward theft. That sacred institution called bank has collapsed. Whether this will be a new epidemic spreading all over the world, it remains to be seen. What next? Shall we store our money henceforth in our cat's empty tins or dig a hole in the ground?
If you privilege your own mind, Marcus Aurelius states in his Meditations book, your guiding spirit and your reverence for it's powers, you won't need solitude or a cast of thousands either. Above all you will be free of fear and desire.
We do not all have the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius. But we all have this power in us to create a world where we can see better the real values of life. In order to see better, we might have to downgrade -- for a while at least -- the word "money" as our favorite mantra, and introduce solitude in our lives acting as the arrow and the soul of the spirit. And even if we do not see light right away, we might be able to learn how to to shed some of those layers of superficiality that governed our lives so far.
This might chart the dawn of a new consciousness. And who knows, we might even enjoy ourselves in the course of our new journey up there. Or is it down here, one is never quite sure about these things.
Effie AraouzouCyprus