By: Gilbert Pilayre
Crete, Greece
Together with my two sons, we brought our dog, Floki, to Berndorf, a town roughly 50 kilometers south of Vienna. He cannot go with us during this vacation. He may love the water being an Italian waterdog (Lagotto Romagnolo), but only when it is fresh water. Salt is toxic to dogs. Our experiences in Croatia and Slovenia were good enough warning to avoid such mishaps. Greece is all seawater with around 6,000 islands and islets. Very much like our own homeland. Over two hundred islands are inhabited. The vast majority are uninhabited.
The hotel we stayed at is called Beach Hotel Dedalos. It reminds me of a character in my elementary days about a Greek myth character who is said to be the father of a reckless teenager son named Icarus who flew close to the sun after the father assembled a pair of wings for both of them to escape from the tower where they were both held prisoners after displeasing the king. There are a few visits from birds in the tower that sometimes left a few feathers. Being a craftsman, this gave Daedalus an idea. He gathered all the feathers and formed a pair of wings for them both. After finishing, he warned his son, Icarus, to fly close to him and avoid going higher.
At first, the son paid attention, but when he glided above the wind, he wondered how it feels to go higher. This he did despite the warnings of his father. The fiery heat of the sun melted the beeswax that held the wings together. Icarus fell to the ocean and drowned.
The profound lesson of this story is that old Buddhist concept of moderation. The ideal path lies in moderation (the middle course). Flying too low represents complacency and lack of ambition, while flying too high represents reckless excess. Wisdom is knowing how to balance both extremes.
We arrived back in Vienna six days after leaving it on a plane. What we learned in Crete and in Greece in general is that nothing lives forever but there will be traces of life like those ancient ruins as well as the works of poets and philosophers. Unlike the monarchs, these humans tried to understand the meaning of life. Perhaps they found some answers but still they succumb in the end.
Every story is based on human weakness. Daedalus built a hollow wooden cow for King Minos’ wife to hide so she could copulate with a white bull sent by Poseidon. This resulted in the birth of the minotaur which caused the profound humiliation of the king. The minotaur could not be reasoned since it lacked human speech and could not be appeased by anything other than human flesh
We return to Vienna, older, carrying the heavy dust of Greek myths and ruined palaces back into our daily routines. The monarchs who built those towers are forgotten dust, and even the philosophers who sought to decode our fleeting existence were eventually swallowed by the silence they tried so hard to understand.
Human weakness is the thread that weaves every story we inherit, but perhaps that is where the bittersweet beauty lies. We build fragile wings out of gathered feathers, knowing they will not last, and we walk our modest middle path through a world where everything eventually ends—grateful for the brief, sunlit light before the inevitable fall.