The bustling metropolis of Thessaloniki is Greece’s second largest city and boasts a population of almost a million people. In contrast, the long and narrow island of Evia, or Euboea, has less than 200,000 inhabitants. The island is considered “almost invisible on the travel radar”; a secret that the Greeks keep to themselves. Today, in the pandemic age, to move from a big city to a fairly remote island village seems sensible, prescient even. To do so in 2001 was considered folly. But Kostas Haralas is used to being a contrarian. In fact, he has made it his profession to go against the tide and, as a result, often finds himself ahead of the times.
Having majored in marketing, Haralas started a career in advertising but quit and moved to North Evia in 2001 in order to become a full-time writer and professional beekeeper. Since then, Haralas has written 17 books for children and young adults and won several distinctions, including a State Literature Prize, and awards from the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).
I ask him if he finds going against the grain difficult and lonely? “Yes, of course, it is isolating,” he replies, “That is, in essence, the meaning of it. But everyone who wishes to be a contrarian comes armed with the needed artillery of being able to disregard the norms and ignore the naysayers. The truly hard part is to see if, and how, your decision is really the right one. For me, it has been ten long years; ten creative years yet ones in which I had to be patient. I watched how Western society was shaping itself and it did not make sense to me to work like crazy and succumb to corporate burnout at thirty. Deliberately, I chose a different path. I feel that it is the same with what I write about. I observe society around me and I try to point out the things that don’t make sense in an easily accessible way that is rooted in philosophy.”
He writes in Greek and also has two translations of his work in Korean. His latest book, published in 2020 and titled Sleeping In, is about a boy who has trouble waking up for school. His mother despairs until she realises what a full schedule her son has. It is a topic that being a parent myself, I can relate to. There is a tendency among modern parents to feel that our role is to fill every waking moment of our children’s lives. In New York, when my son was two years old, well-meaning friends asked me why I had not signed him up yet for music appreciation classes, making me worried that I’d doomed my firstborn to a life without melody or meaning! It is not considered abnormal to administer intelligence tests to four-year-olds for kindergarten admissions and you feel that you’ve no choice but to adhere to societal demands. That just as we adults participate in the rat race; our progeny, too, must follow.
But Haralas is unwilling to blindly buy into such expectations. “At a young age, I realised that the relationship between parent and child carries an element of oppression. The question is which way it flows. I decided that I would not be the one oppressed so I questioned everything. And I continue to do so. My parents were not great readers so my initial interest in reading everything that I encountered, even if it was on the back of a toothpaste, was as an act of rebellion,” he says. This act of rebellion helped him to go on to become, as he terms it, “a professional observer” of human nature.
I ask him if he has a message for today’s children and he laughs, “It might be heretical to say this but there is nothing wrong with the children. That’s not where the problem lies.” In his view, children are much more attuned to imagination and their true nature than adults so pointing out life’s absurdities in his books is to help them come to terms with the things that they probably already recognise as being so. “In a way, I write for the parents. What I aim to do is to put question marks around our actions and our thoughts. If through my work, I can be the catalyst to a conversation between parent and child, which leads them to find solutions together, then I consider my job well done.”
Today, he feels that the important creational link between parent and child is being sacrificed in people’s quest for more. “As a parent, the time we have with our children is precious and we have to be present for them. But our social structures do not allow for this. Both parents work long hours and are absent from the home. They’ve little time. But we have a huge responsibility to listen to the children. They are the future and it is only through them that change for the better will come. Today, however, there are no ears for the younger generation. If only we paid more attention to them, it would be a game changer for all of us.”
And he does not believe the answer lies in making the children as busy as their parents. “This is an intense experience of childhood that we are asking of our kids – so many activities and things to do and be. In Greece, it is common for children to study three or more languages. Instead, they should be slowing down. They need to hang out more, look out the window, count the stars in the sky, be still, observe.”
Before our meeting, I looked him up online. I notice that he joined Twitter in 2015 but only has 22 followers. He’s surprised by this but not for the reasons I assume. He laughs as he asks, “Who follows someone who never tweets?!” Safe to say that Haralas is not active on social media. He gleefully mentions the number of Facebook friends that he has. “Commercially speaking, that would be considered suicide. But I’m with Sasha Baron Cohen who is ringing the bells on how democracy is threatened by social media. Too much power has been transferred too quickly to too few.”
Rather than despair about this like most of us, Haralas returns to the notion of responsibility. “Ultimately, it’s a matter of choice. Our environment is bombarding us with false meanings, false needs. What do you choose to do? Are you accepting it or are you building an immune system against it? At the end of the day, it is up to us.” He applies this to his beekeeping trade as well, choosing to sell his produce locally. “I don’t export because I have an eco-driven perception of commerce. I sell my organically produced honey here on the island. This doesn’t mean that I am against globalisation but I do think that we can slow down our pace of production and better rationalise our resources. It is madness to source ingredients from one location, blend in another, process in yet another part of the world, and finally, distribute somewhere completely different! We have to ask ourselves if this is what we really need to be doing.”
He credits his life by the ocean for his approach. “One of my greatest realisations was achieved on one of my evening strolls along the sea. As I watched the tide come in and out, I thought of the concept of a blood chain – you know who your parents are and where you come from, and you have children so you know where you are going. At that moment, a great peace came to me. I am grateful for my life now, not because of something specific that happened, but because of what has been revealed to me about this journey. It is a process. For this to go well, you have to have time and you have to bring a certain energy with you.”
To see more of Kostas’s work and connect with him, please visit his website:
http://www.kostasharalas.wixsite.com/eubiomelo
What does it mean to you, personally, to be a contrarian? Are you one yourself or do you have examples in your own life?
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Comments by Rianka Mohan