URSABLOG: Nothing Gold Can Stay

The sun didn’t really manage to shine through the clouds today, and was too weak to burn off the belts of morning mist that were wrapped around the hillsides. We were enshrouded as we sat and had breakfast; the grey sea in the distance faded in and out of our consciousness, peeking through the curtains of fog every now and then to remind us of its existence – and our relation to it – but never engaging enough to draw us to it. Wrapped in our personal cloud, we were reluctant to venture out. But once we realised the hillsides above us were clear, we decided that we should go and see what the world above us what up to. Within a few hundred metres of driving we could see clearly.

Spring is arriving cautiously here, in fits and starts. On Saturday, a glorious day, the sea formed the bluest of backdrops, and as the first swallows of the summer stretched their wings in the late afternoon, scouring the skies for insects to refuel after their long flight up from Africa, I had a sense that summer was coming. But March is a fickle month: today although the trees are budding with green gold, and delighted us on our walk, the memories of a starting summer from Saturday have faded to a grey as dull as the skies blurring the sea on the horizon. Skiathos looked bulky and bored in the distance, and the joy of the coming spring was relegated to the details of the budding trees, the primroses dotting the paths, and the birds twittering their excitement as they fluttered from tree to tree; the woods have yet to shout their joy. But they have a memory of previous years, and this memory combined with this humid moment now are also present in the summer to come. And the winter that will follow.

The conversations here have been wide ranging, funny and insightful. Looking through family photograph albums whilst listening to the letters between the ancestors of my hosts being read out – social history as well as shipping history – and hearing the stories about their lives, and their characters, has been fascinating, as well as poignant and enlightening. Their life was from a completely different time and place than my own, and I wondered, once again, how on earth I have ended up in Greece, in shipping, on my own, with no link to this heritage except the road – less travelled by certainly – that led me here.

And we have talked of many things: of ships certainly – if not shoes, sealing-wax, or cabbages – but also of kings or at least their modern-day equivalent. In fact a hot topic – not only due to the expertise of my companions – has been the sudden realisation by the US administration that ships exist, and are important. This had led to lively discussions comparing the views of very smart people in high places trying to change the world of trade, with those of us at the bottom trying to make the world of shipping work, and make decisions that will sail us safely through these challenging waters.

Lively disagreements in the first excitement of colliding positions have subsided to a more measured and leisurely enquiry about what the other knows, and thinks, leading to a better understanding all round, if not a change of minds. Amongst all of this, books and texts – as well as music, films and art – have been recommended and shared, as well as our own stories; we have laughed a lot.

Yesterday, after dinner out, we came back and settled down to watch an Italian film: Perfect Strangers. It’s a nice movie, and on the surface it comes across as a slight, entertaining black comedy, but it has been knocking around my mind ever since. The plot is simple enough: a married couple is waiting for close friends to join them at home for a nice if somewhat ordinary dinner on a warm summer evening. The friends arrive and settle down, however something is missing. Perhaps, if everyone placed their mobile phones on the table – and like a dangerous Russian roulette shared whatever arrived (texts, WhatsApp messages, and calls) – it would spice things up a bit? Everyone agrees, because surely amongst close friends who share everything, who could have anything to hide? But of course, everyone does – to a greater or lesser extent, honourable or utterly disreputable – and what follows is a bitter-sweet exploration of motives, the danger of truth, and their consequences.

Do we tell lies, or hide uncomfortable truths to protect others, or ourselves? When we tell ourselves that those close to us do not need know, is it because we would be ashamed if they did? Would our own actions, however justifiable we think they are, stand up to the scrutiny of those that we are hiding from? What is forgivable, and what is unforgivable? Will others forgive us before we can forgive ourselves? I will not go any further because I don’t want to spoil the film for you, but if I tell you it even caused me to question my motivation into why and how I write this blog – and what I choose to write, and what I choose to exclude – then you will understand it struck deep.

Every morning that I wake here, after a long and peaceful sleep – that only a house deeply rooted in the positive energies that are buried deep in these hills can bring – I find that not only am I deeply refreshed in body, but also in mind and spirit. Away from a life fought in the Athenian trenches of the shipping industry, I have been able to take stock, clarify or correct certain positions I have held – in shipping and in life – and am better prepared to return to the fight, re-energised and full of new purpose. Let’s see how long this energy and sense of purpose lasts…

I do not have much more to bring you than this. A long weekend in the company of good, kind, interesting and engaging people is a precious thing to be treasured. I find myself wondering why I don’t do it more often. And all the things – ideas, thoughts, stories – that have been shared this weekend will take a long time to percolate through my mind in order to extract the knowledge and wisdom and use it. But I have been fed, and well.

I sometimes get stressed about not doing enough, not being active enough, not talking enough, not writing enough, not reading enough – and not reading the right things – and of course not doing enough deals. Long weekends like this remind me that sometimes, just being is enough. Robert Frost’s powerful poem came to my mind earlier:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

I can safely say that even as this day now is coming to an end, and even as I know that nothing gold can stay, during these last few days I have lived in that hour – in many ways – and am a better man for it.

Simon Ward