The Olympics Are Over, Now
Get Off the Couch
September 20, 2004
As the days pass since the Olympic Flame was extinguished over Athens, the
excitement for those who went and those who didn’t have faded as quickly as
the tans of those who made the trip to Greece this summer. For those two weeks
for those of us who were stuck here it was a rare opportunity to privately
celebrate our Hellenism while the rest of the world was exposed to it for the
very first time. Greek-Americans are communal by nature, defining themselves
through their interactions with the other Greek-Americans around them. Whether
it is through Greek Nights, Greek festivals, church, or other social or family
functions, it seems that you can’t be a Greek-American alone. But during the
Olympics, whether it was following the news from Athens on the Internet, or
watching the games in Primetime after work, it didn’t matter if it was a
Tuesday night in the middle of August and nothing Greek was going on, you could
still be a Greek-American with no one else around.
For those two weeks, I had a regular weekday routine. I’d get up a little
before 7:00 A.M. and turn on the Today Show to catch tidbits from Athens. Just
seeing how bright the mid-afternoon Greek sun was coming across the airwaves was
energizing in and of itself – if UV rays could travel through the screen I
would have been a nice golden brown by the end of those games. During lunch at
work, I’d check out the feature articles on Greece that were rampant on the
Internet. In the evenings, it was more Olympic viewing on NBC with some segments
on Greece thrown in for good measure. It didn’t matter that there were no
other Greeks around, or that I wasn’t wearing some Greek Night outfit, or
there wasn’t the smell of souvlaki in the air or the sound of Byzantine chant
in the background. With barely any Greek events going on and most everyone else
in Greece, it was nice to know that a Greek-American identity could survive on
its own. Contrast that with the weeks after the Olympics, with little or no talk
of Greece on TV or the Internet. Without Greek events or church, that sense of
real social interaction, one could get so wrapped up in their secular
non-Greek-American life, that Greek events you swore to yourself you’d never
attend start looking like the greatest thing in the world again.
We realize that sites like DCGreeks.com, while facilitating many out there in
finding out about what events are happening, allow many Greek-Americans out
there to "cheat" – to have a voyeuristic view of the Greek-American
community around them without having to get off the couch. So many people use
sites like ours to see who was at the last Greek event, send messages to other
members and view countless profiles, but never will you see them interacting
with the community in any other meaningful way. For the times of your life when
you are too busy to stay involved with the Greek American community, a site like
DCGreeks.com is a good substitute, but when you have the time to get involved
but instead you find yourself using the site as your exclusive means of
obtaining the Greek-American experience, it’s time to put down the mouse for a
few hours, and make it out to an event. The good thing is that when you get
there, you’ll know everyone, or at least you’ll think you know everyone from
having seen his or her profile or picture on the site. If you wouldn’t know
what to say to these people when you meet them in person, just go with,
"Hey, haven’t I seen you on DCGreeks.com?" If they’re not on
DCGreeks.com, well then you just helped us out by introducing one more person to
this site, and have helped yourself out in having made a friend that you can say
hi to at the next Greek event you attend.
Read
past feature articles