Get Drunk On Life

Learning How To Be Yourself Through “Zorba The Greek”

The psychologist, Winnicot, believed that those in childhood, raised by depressed or abusive parents, would tend to develop a hyper-compliant ‘false self’. They may learn to not ask for attention and will give up on being spontaneous.

“The child gives up on having a spontaneous, desiring self in order to act as the parent to his or her parents”.

What’s the big deal with being spontaneous? The classic “Zorba the Greek” is perhaps the greatest literary answer to this question, in which a mundane man collides with a Greek character named Zorba who exudes passion, spontaneity, and the capacity for dance in the best and worst of times. Zorba feels like someone you might have met before; his familiarity emergent in his sense of feeling at home no matter what and championing life above all else.

The greater lesson to be learned from Zorba is his constant embrace of happiness through his immediate environment. The narrator quotes Confucius who argues that “Many seek happiness higher than man; other beneath him. But happiness is the same height as man”. Some pursue happiness through intellectual pursuit, unravelling the puzzle of the universe. Or perhaps they work many hours in search…