Eric Weiner

paying attention is the first step on the road to genius.

We are all a little bit Greek, whether we know it or not.

you’ve ever had a rational thought or asked Why? or gazed at the night sky in silent wonder, then you have had a Greek moment.

many of our words sprang from their rich language that a Greek prime minister once gave an entire speech, in English, using only Greek-derived words.

“We may be bankrupt, but we still have great weather,”

Greeks saw them, though. For them, the vases served a strictly utilitarian purpose. They were everyday objects. Not until the 1970s, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid more than $1 million for a single vase, was Greek pottery elevated to high art. So when exactly did these clay pots become works of genius? We like to think they always were, and that only later did we “discover” their genius. That’s one way of looking at it. Proponents of the Fashionista Theory of Genius would argue that they became works of genius in the 1970s when the Metropolitan Museum, speaking the language of money, said so.

“What we’re doing right now is very Greek,” he says.

“Really? Because all we’re doing is walking.”

“Exactly. The ancient Greeks walked everywhere, all the time.”

Sometimes we can see more by narrowing our field of view than by expanding it.

The Athenian agora was the original everything store. If it existed in the ancient world, you could find it for sale at the agora.

meet at a café in her neighborhood. “It’s near the Temple of Zeus,” she had told me, as if that were the most natural landmark in the world. That’s what I love about Greek directions; they’re so much more interesting than back home. “Look for the Temple of Zeus” resonates more deeply, is freighted with more history, than “turn left at the Dunkin’ Donuts.”