DIMITRIS KARAGIANNIS

Child Psychiatrist — Existential Systemic Psychotherapist, Doctor of Democritus University

Speech by D. Karagiannis from the Conference "Practicing Administration in Public and Business" under the auspices of A.E. of the President of the Republic Mr. P. Pavlopoulos at the Amphitheater of the Benaki Museum on March 28, 2019

"Are you happy in your everyday life? I have been a manager in the public sector for 32 years and — between us — I have had to apologize too many times because I remained a manager even in the previous party situation. Each new situation had to look at me "suspiciously", because I remained even after they changed and this did not only happen with changes of Governments, but also with changes of ministers and commanders. As if being in this position was suspicious. And what position was it? I am a doctor.

You understand that I could talk about many of these issues of my daily life in the public sector as well as in the private sector. I tell you that really if the quality I had in the public sector was not the same as I have in my personal sector, then in the private sector I would be far below. I had to enter in a personal way that supported what was done in my daily life in the public sector and this allowed me to be credible elsewhere.

But since I was telling you if you are happy in everyday life, many times my colleagues already know when I meet them in the elevator I ask them "So? What did you enjoy today?", the first answers they tell me, the usual is "you know, I saw so many people, I made so many files, I took such actions..." I tell them "I didn't ask you what you did, what was your job, but if you were happy something; Was there anything exciting in your life today?' "But Mr. Karagianni, it's 9 o'clock in the morning, how can I be happy?"

This is what we have to ask ourselves and see what is happening in our lives. Because at some moments as I listened here to some lurking open confrontations, questions, judgments between private and public, I thought it felt very familiar. And what I heard helped me a lot and I even changed some of what I was prepared to say.

It felt very familiar because they reminded me of couples in front of my desk who come and argue and start making accusations about each other. Usually I, being the outsider, see that they are both telling the truth, only that no one is listening. Because when one says something to him, the other also says something and therefore what is in danger of happening, is to cancel everything that is being done.

What I was thinking about this is that if there are the worst problems in a couple, but there is a commitment that they are together, that they will walk together, then the bigger problems can be solved.

On the contrary, when there is the absence of commitment, the absence of trust that they are together and that they want to be together, then the smallest problem introduces dissolving elements.

A second element from the previous theory refers to crises, shipwrecks and hens. What I was thinking is do we sometimes wait for the problem to become a crisis before we start thinking about it?

If again we have learned to be in our familiar reserved way, can even crisis be harnessed? That is, when we have learned to defend only our right, that is, to defend only the way we know how, if we have learned in our rigidity and in the accusations of the other, that the other is always to blame, then we will be able to see, perhaps, something so that do we use it even when things are not going well? I'm afraid not.

That is, if something very bad happens to two parents, then their child will also have a problem. If they have not agreed in advance how they will relate, then the problem of the child becomes a new field of confrontation between the parents. I don't know how it works with MPs being able to eat chicken, but has eating together been abolished for couples, for families? Has precious time been lost so that they can share things that are not only negative?

And that's where I wonder: If they can't share things, if the common ground doesn't exist beforehand, then how can they avoid, in the difficult moment, triggering even worse situations?

What about change in people? If at such Conferences one asks "Are businesses changing?" then can there be 1% to say they are not? Which companies don't change? the closed ones, the dying ones.

Can we say that we don't want the government to change? How many will say that we do not want changes in the public sector? Zero. But if we ask "does man change?" then we will all say yes. Or to remember the various sayings we had from the past from our tradition "The wolf even if...", "the colored one even if you wash it.. .." (they don't exactly call it colored.. .), "it comes out first the.. .and then.. .''

So, at the same time that we talk about changes and take them for granted, we see that our society is changing at an alarming rate. In fact, we often wonder about the rate at which things change. This one is very fast, to the extent that we cannot include it in the problem.

How do we go about following these if we have the opinion that people don't change? And if we want to see this and think about it, what has made our people, who we always talk about being wise, say such things?

What we have to see is that closed systems do not change, closed systems prohibit change. If we were in a closed village, where stimuli from the outside world did not exist, where the roles no longer only concerned the families as they do today, but also concerned the members of the wider community, if that is to say the products and the productions and whatever was the same as the generations, so what the oldest, the elderly, the grandfather of the society knew, he knew elements and gave elements that must work in the same way to be functional.

If there are closed systems then people decide not to change. Of course, the same thing can happen within a family. Each of us is born with certain roles and this risks always defining him. In a crisis, the children of a family have learned to be in certain roles.

Think to yourself what is the way you react when there is a conflict in front of you? We usually follow the terms we had within our paternal family. Someone cries, someone goes and hugs the victim, the mother, for example, who is distressed by the conflict with her husband, someone else goes and attacks the abusive father so that he can comply, someone else runs away. So, we start and think that all of us have started with some specifications on how we move through difficult situations.

If we are left, then we will always take care of someone in the same way. So, in the same way we will be involved. Therefore if we get into this state, we will never change. Our people were also sailors and could and did adopt elements from other cultures. Because, if the Greek culture is worth it, it is because it was not closed and borrowed elements from the surrounding cultures. He had a solid value system. If you don't have a stable value system, then you don't change, you don't get enriched. You adapt and adaptation is not change, it is the exact opposite of change. When I am constantly adapting to the different, it means that I do not have a personal self. So basically I don't change, I become what our people say "where the wind blows". So I have no opinion.

If we follow the changes and crises in our lives, we will see and realize that the sure change through time is decay. As we grow older, we lose some capabilities and find ourselves with less strength. Have you ever been wished to "size them up"? what have they wished you when they say "to centimeter"? To lose strength, to lose abilities, to have too many of your own people die and have buried them, to have no object and to be out of place and time. This is our autopilot if we leave it to time, to wear and tear.

The question is: Will we have anything more as we go along? As life gets harder, as it's a video game that changes tracks and as the tracks pass the game of life gets harder and more challenging, will we have any new feature in the more challenging phase after today's? Have we gained anything from today?

What is happening to us is what we have to ask ourselves. When we refuse to see the end, when we refuse to see our death that all of us no matter what we achieve, no matter what claims we have, no matter what offices we hold, we must realize that at some point we die. But what does this mean?

It means that if we follow the ancient Greek concept of the end, then we should think that the end also means a purpose. So what is the purpose of our existence? What is the meaning of our life course? It makes sense; And who will make sense of it?

If we keep saying that our families are to blame, that the time we were born in, that our profession, circumstances, the public or the private sector are to blame then we will find ourselves without meaning and without purpose in our lives. It is not enough to collect moments. It is wrong what is said nowadays that "life is moments, take care to collect them", It means that there is no meaning in life, and that is why it is worth collecting some moments.

What does this mean; Consume. Consume as much as you can. Consume products, consume relationships, consume persons to be able to exist. That is, to become a zombie, to suck a little blood from the other person, in order to stay alive. But this has an appointed end.

What does this mean; It means that in the course of life at some point you too will find yourself in the pandemic that is hitting the western world, which is existential depression. When you have consumed everything, there is nothing left for you and the question is whether your life has meaning, then you realize that change is not an end in itself. I don't change to change. I change in order to achieve my goal, my purpose.

So the critical question is: What is my purpose? Will he be able to determine the course I want to take in my life? So I'm not moving anywhere alone, without a compass and without knowing where to go. I don't make changes for the sake of changes, and I don't try sometimes here — sometimes there. I behave according to what I have set as an important goal in my life. He gives meaning to my whole course and dictates the changes.

This presupposes, however, the existence of personal responsibility. We have learned to abdicate personal responsibility. To see it as something negative, as something heavy, while personal responsibility is our own way of managing power, responsibility.

If I take personal responsibility, it means I take control of my life. This is defined by me, not just my first five childhood years, not just my DNA, not just my gifted brain. I decide with my own responsibility how I will lead things in my life.

If I don't, then will it be the fault of, for example, the public space that I lose my life? When I go back home, what will I pass on to my children? How wronged do I feel? And how much can this annoy the Minister? In other words, will the Minister be able to sleep if I feel hurt with my children and find it difficult for them?

What we have to see, however, is whether I will be able to sleep well at night. If I feel like my life is empty, empty? If because I have a useless manager, will I lose the ability to be creative? What happens when I'm in front of a screen that I need to pass data to, and while I'm passing data I find myself being a part of that digital system? Do we accept this for our lives?

Are we losing our intelligence if we are only a part, a cog in a digital situation, a digital program? When the system doesn't recognize something, then you have to change it, not the system that doesn't recognize it.

Are we thus losing our humanity, our own self, our human face? And it shouldn't normally be training staff how to handle a program that doesn't satisfy users, but changing based on staff experiences.

But if it's good to have a digital program that doesn't update, should we update our personal lives? We change our personal life so that it is more functional.

Which children are happier? The children of civil servants or the children of private sector workers? Has such research been done? What will it produce? Children of civil servants are unhappy because they have less money or because their parents lose their creativity in the public sector. Children of private sector workers are unhappy because their parents don't have time when the whole company is eating them up.

And if parents aren't their kids' heroes, then they shouldn't blame their kids for playing video games and getting lost in online games. They do it because they are looking to find other heroes or they become false heroes themselves, virtual heroes of some situation.

So in all this we have to think: Is it better for me to blame someone else or the system, or for me to see where I want to take my life?

Are we going to wait for the problems to come, for the wreck to happen before we can see again where our lives are going? We'll deal with who's in charge and who's driving, or wish we had problems.

If we decide to take responsibility for our lives, then we will go against the populism that exists in our country and does not concern only one party, but permeates the whole society horizontally. Why is there populism in the school? How many children stay in the same class because they haven't read? Primary school; In high school? In how many absences does a high school student miss the class? There is no number. There are 100 times, after which the teachers ask the parents to come and erase a child's absence. Thus, the child who has never had difficulty in his life and has not become accountable does not know how to face difficulties. It's only natural for these kids to get their driver's license by oiling up.

And this child who will have progressed in this way, will walk the same way either in the public sector or in the private sector. It is an opportunity to think about how we will change. Not change for the sake of change, not to wait for the other to change, but to think for ourselves: How do we want to lead our life, what meaning will our life have? What is important to our lives? Can we live among people and not rejoice in them? And aren't we just cogs in our work? Can we make decisions about our personal lives based on our value system? Can we transfer our personal values to our profession just as we can transfer the values and capabilities we have acquired in professional life to personal life?

Questions are personal and answers are personal.“