Ancestry 20 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Family Traits

Yiannis imposed on his family a peculiar culture from the elevated position of respect and prestige that the veteran teacher and headmaster commanded· mostly unintentionally, sometimes deliberately, however, not through intimidation or psychological compulsion. He rarely yelled to his wife and daughters, let alone quarrelled with them. This kind of latent nurturing, aided perhaps by some untraceable genetic heritage, instilled in the personality of the three daughters, who stayed with the family well into adulthood, certain common traits and a distinct temperament. In family gatherings, the following statements were often voiced: "This is how we, the Economou’s, are…” or “The Economou’s are not up to such things..." And nothing would be attempted to changing the underlying attitudes.

Main characteristic of this "Economou" temperament was the excessive sensitivity to external stimuli, such as words or actions from actors outside the family nucleus, which through a labyrinthine thought process and over-analysis, further compounded by adding unnecessary gravity to sayings and events, otherwise trivial and transient for the common sense, that is through an anti-dialectical isolation of words or actions detached from their context or ignoring any correlation with other events, often led to misinterpretations, misunderstandings, resentment, distress, sulking, bad-temperedness, anger. It led to a temporary insularity from the outside environment, disproportionate and asymmetrical reactions vis-à-vis their cause, often an acute feeling of embarrassment and shame and some psychological turbulence of the like.

The Economou family was collectively or individually obsessed by being under the scrutiny from the “eyes of the external world” and “the gaze of society”, by “what the world would say or how would judge us”, by how every action would be seen by the world, how each phrase said would be understood and interpreted. Such fears were often counter balanced by pretence and duplicity. This emotional hypersensitivity over an underlying deep-rooted sense of pessimism and negative predisposition to the denouement of complex life situations was self-fuelled by an innate family introversion and the code of conduct this adopted: whereby, one sister would talk with the other and analyse ad nauseum the one and same situation from every possible point of view, direct or oblique or inverted, through a perpetual cycle of in-house gossiping and, later in life, via endless phone calls and back and forth visits. Unsurprisingly, such much ado about nothing would prove ineffective and fruitless· considerably more than necessary amounts of cognitive power was wasted even in the rare cases when the analysis and discussions were aimed at something of substance. Thankfully, such mental tensions and exertions and the associated distress faded quickly without serious repercussions to the mental well-being and family tranquillity, before they emerge anew from another spark or under a different pretext.

Family introversion, on the other hand, an obscure yet powerful centre of gravity towards which the three sisters converged, might have been partly bred by Mr. Yiannis’ past or it might have subconsciously fostered by him, or it could merely be formed because of life itself in a small village community, culturally inferior to the city where I grew up. Or, perhaps, it was due to limited innate capabilities and the scanty intercourse with the outside world – via work, studies, politics, or raising children. The two of the sisters did not have any children. A logical result would be the inadequacy to face up and overcome the obstacles that life regularly erects in front of us, beyond the trivial everyday questions with obvious answers· the indecision in the face of existential dilemmas that seek choices, good or bad, and taking responsibility for the possible consequences. The horizons of their lives remained low for the best part of their youth, reduced into reliving the everydayness, the torturous repetition of its trivial and colourless components: household chores, shopping from the grocery across the street or the village markets, the coffee drinking and coffee reading sessions with the neighbours, the telephone calls to sisters and relatives away, and so on.

Why am I writing all this about grandfather’s family? With maturity and the reflections of my  consciousness, in the dialogues with it along the road to knowing-myself, I discovered that I inherited, partly due to the impressions imprinted in my conscience and left indelible traces on a malleable child soul, whilst growing up with Mother and her family, partly due to grandfather’s household modus operandi and the prevailing intra-family mentality, as expressed by Mother and to lesser extent by my grandfather and aunts, and, as always, partly due to an indeterminate genetic footprint: the much higher than average emotional sensitivity, the pessimism and negativity displayed ahead of life crises or after major decisions with uncertain or several possible outcomes, the meticulous planning always based on the worst possible scenario, the propensity to abdicate a heavy burden of responsibility in the face of misfortunes involving myself and others.

Such traits inevitably determined several of my personal choices along the way. Yet, despite the bonds that heredity binds us to our ancestors and the inherently reactionary attitude to life situations I inherited, during an apparently autonomous and "radical" development of my personality, which would eventually be detached from the family roots and traditions, I managed to at least expand my horizons, in as much as geography and time allowed. Being conscious of the reality I experience each time, and of the End that human fate inevitably has in store for us, I tried constantly to trouble the stagnant waters of everyday routine and free myself from the shackles of these traits I inherited and brough up with, no matter how difficult it had been. But admittedly it has been and still is a cumbersome burden.