Live Like Zorba

Leave it to self-styled 'Greek peasant girl' Ariana Huffington to find Santa Fe lifestyle gurus promulgating “The Opa! Way” of life. They derived wisdom on "the full catastrophe" as Zorba called life, after interviewing Greek villagers and from readings ancient sages like Heraclitus, a Buddha contemporary from Ephesus in what's now Turkey. What an excuse for a working vacation! If I could live like Zorba, I'd just dance in a picturesque field all day, my boy. Here are the essential Opa tenets (with my sarcastic asides). 

•  Have a sense of others. In Greek villages, people are interconnected, with notions of honor, caring and hospitality. (And gossip.) 
•  Live life with a purpose to engage, collaborate, innovate and succeed. In Greece, our sages claim, accumulating financial wealth is overshadowed by the need to live life with purpose. (The ratio of dodged taxes to nights out sipping frappe? Cash in the bank!)
• Work-life balance is an illusion. Resilience, not balance, is what matters, Greeks say. (More like capitulation with survivalist tactics. Hundreds of years of occupation, then war and political upheaval,  and now financial crisis gives Greeks a certain bias. Ditto for anyone left in a Greek village, who would be as resiliant as a goat.) 
• Grant and receive forgiveness for your mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing. Let go of suffering. (Who can argue with this Biblical imperative? Greek debtholders!) 

Sources:  The Opa Way and Opa Way on Forgiveness.