Where perspective shifts, and priorities become simple and clear.
This morning we went for a hike in the Aegina mountains, up to the remains of an ancient village overlooking the sea. The fields are full of wildflowers, knee-high green grasses waving in the breeze.
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Stone walls still standing. An old olive tree grows as if it had always belonged there — because it has. The view is panoramic, the Aegean Sea as blue as the sky. As we sit on the warm rocks taking it all in, I’m reminded that the whole island is still without potable water. It’s been nearly six weeks now. A pipe from Athens burst, and suddenly everyday things — brushing our teeth, washing without thinking — are no longer automatic. You learn quickly what you can adapt to, and what you truly miss. |
It’s a strange gift, these interruptions. They slow us down and strip away assumptions. They remind us what we usually take for granted.
Water is an obvious natural resource. A daily need. Life sustaining.
Health is another — though we rarely think of it that way until it’s compromised. And olive oil, when it is treated with care, integrity, and respect, belongs in that same category.
Long before A+ existed as a product, Athan and I created Aristoleo and have spent the past thirteen years protecting olive oil itself — advocating for high phenolic olive oil; how it is grown, harvested, stored, measured, and understood.
Not as a commodity, but as a living agricultural resource tied to land, people, and time. Particularly early harvest olive oil; its health benefits known from times before these ruins housed families.
Like water, olive oil is only as good as the system that protects it.
Break the chain — soil, harvest, handling, storage — and what reaches us is diminished, even if it still looks the same.
Walking among those ruins today, I was reminded that civilizations endure not because they consume well, but because they steward well. They protect what sustains them — or they lose it.
Civilizations endure not because they consume well, but because they steward well.
This Sunday, I’m holding that thought close.
Care is not an add-on.
Protection is not optional.
And health, like water and like olive oil, is precious and deserves our attention long before it’s at risk.
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Written from Aegina