The weather in Tenerife, where I’ve just spent a few days, wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. But I couldn’t really complain. Perfection is associated, as they say, only with Swiss watches, Dutch tulips or the English countryside. The room in the 4-star hotel I stayed was quite comfortable, service as good as Tesco’s during the Christmas season and food acceptable though no more than a truth we don’t like.
Yet something very substantial was missing from the experience. Highlighted by the undisturbed uneventfulness of the days that lulled me into a drowsiness from which there was no easy escape, life seemed to be devoid of any quintessence. All it involved was frivolous pursuits leading to the satisfaction of needs as important as micturition.
Life’s original flavour had been extirpated. People, mostly British and Germans, wouldn’t even exchange a hello or hola. Eyes never made contact. Instinctive smiles, open or clandestine, were definitely out of order. I felt as if I were seated at the Heathrow’s McDonalds.
The experience, I thought instantly, paled to monochrome if compared with what one experiences on Skyros island. The difference has nothing to do with geography. It’s cultural. The Skyros culture has absolutely nothing to do with the stodgy culture of the holiday industry.
Rather than tedious, life in Skyros brings people together in a way routine back home can’t even imagine. It enables them to go away not just emotionally, physically and mentally renewed, but also with some new friends who’ve found a place in their heart.
All this is supported, as the Skyros website says, by the Skyros culture which emphasises being rather than having, doing rather than consuming and belonging rather than withdrawing into the garden of your private world. It also rests on the unappeasable love of beauty, from the beauty of the heart to the beauty of the institutions of a just society.
Of course, The Skyros Centre and even more Atsitsa Bay do not provide the facilities the Tenerife hotel I stayed did. But rather than lessen its charming presence in the holiday world, Skyros’ countless imperfections add to it. They ensure its overriding allure.
The flimsy culture of the holiday industry has safely reproduced the insipid reality of our daily life. But values and ideals, the vision of a world that cares about people rather than consumption, can still make a difference.
Yannis Andricopoulos, Phd
Skyros Co-Founder