Meet Nick Papadakis- a Millennial Who Needs a Way Back

Like the baby boomers before them, the generation of young Americans, commonly called Millennials, were generally named for the oldest who came of age around the time our calendars kicked over to 2000. That would include anyone born after 1980. I’ve omitted subgroups like Gen X and Gen Z because they are an overcomplication for this discussion. However, I’ve included a subgroup focusing on Americans of Greek heritage born after 1980.

Ask any Hellenic American from the ‘boomer’ generation, and you’ll find they readily admit that millennials are disappearing from their ethnic community. They’re not becoming extinct like the silverback gorilla or the white rhinoceros, but they are abandoning Greek culture as irrelevant to their American, technology-driven, material-obsessed, social-media-connected existence.

 Our Poster Boy

Meet Nick Papadakis! For our purposes, he is a fictional character representing millennial Greek Americans. Nick is a member of primarily third-generation Greek Americans.

If his name sounds familiar, it could be that you recall the 1981 film The Postman Always Rings Twice,[1] released the same year Nick was born. In the film, Jack Nicholson and  Jessica Lange murder Nick Papadakis, a Greek diner proprietor. Our Nick knows of his namesake but is silent because the character is an American cliché of the perennial Greek restaurant proprietor and bears no resemblance to him.

A date-stamped millennial, our Nick grew up in Chicago. However, his experience is no different than if he had grown up in New York, Boston, or any other American community with a concentration of Greek American families. He was raised in a tradition that places supreme importance on the family unit above all else, a tradition that reaches back 8,000 years. He was conditioned by his parents’ endless mantra that he was exceptional in this world and not only could but would accomplish great things in his life. His family closeness also made him comfortable openly hugging his father, brother, uncle, or any other male without fear of any Victorian stigma attached to the custom. Best of all, he learned to be socially at ease in conversation, rendering him personable. In essence, he was given the same traits as the generations before him. And yet, Nick is different- or at least he believes he is.

Why is that? It's because he was born and raised in America, as an American. Nick believes in American exceptionalism and the American dream. However, by embracing his American identity, his Greek heritage has taken a backseat, becoming a feature he is only reminded of at periodic family gatherings. While he genuinely appreciates his family and heritage, he seldom mentions them to outsiders, as the label of Greek is immediately associated with a caricature, much like the movie’s doomed husband of Jessica Lange’s Cora Papadakis.

Although Postman’s Nick is a hard-working restaurant proprietor who probably inherited the family business from his father, our Nick is one of America’s young professionals. He earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University — an achievement that also resulted in significant student debt. Nick’s debt balance is half of what it cost to acquire his degrees, thanks to his parent’s dedication to funding as much as they could extract from the family restaurant. They upheld the age-old Greek emphasis on the value of education, which is regarded as second only to the importance of family itself. So why would Nick ignore such a rich tradition that connects him directly to the greatness of the people who first civilized the world?

Nick’s Greekness took time to fade from his consciousness. As a child, he listened to his grandfather’s stories (a first-generation Greek American) about his struggles to come to America. Once his grandfather passed away, the stories faded. Nick’s father, a second-generation Greek American, had little connection to the family’s suffering and journey to America. Nick’s understanding of his family’s origin is limited to the vague awareness that they originally emigrated from Greece. His only additional knowledge of his ancestry is that they entered the U.S. at Ellis Island in New York City during the 1920s. Yet, despite his lack of understanding about his ancestry, he seems to be one of the fortunate ones whose future looks bright. So, why does Nick need a way back?

Although Nick feels socially comfortable when he gathers with friends at their  trendy Chicago watering hole, there are a few subtle, invisible cracks in his worldview that he keeps pushing out of his consciousness. He graduated near the top of his class, yet his compensation package at the firm falls far short of what he expected to earn at this stage of his career and what his predecessors earned in better times. He knows he is just as capable as his superiors at the firm, yet his advancement is hindered by their reluctance to fast-track his career or even recognize his value. He feels as though he is falling behind. He would have already moved on, except that his prospects for something better elsewhere seem non-existent.

He does have his own apartment in Chicago, but it’s a dump— another far cry from what he envisioned as his destiny. He shudders to think of some of his colleagues who, due to their crushing student debt, now reside in their childhood rooms at their parents’ homes and are commuting to work.

Nick hasn’t found the right girl yet because the one he chooses will be the girl he brings home to meet his parents— and there’s subliminal guilt tied to that event. His prospects are also young millennial professionals who have no intention of having children and starting a family until they’ve fulfilled their own destinies as professionals. Thus, his family and everyone else live in two completely different worlds. He fears being seen as the personification of a Big, Fat, Greek Wedding.

He stays active through exercise and sports and is a spirited Bulls/Bears/Cubs fan. If he had more disposable income, he would attend the games instead of lamenting his preference for the instant replay on TV. His Facebook page showcases hundreds of friends who follow his daily experiences as he follows theirs. He sips ultra-premium Tequila, wears designer-label clothing, and looks like he belongs on the cover of GQ— as if to fulfill his elusive destiny. An objective observer might conclude that he is the envy of his generation. So, why does Nick wake each morning with an almost imperceptible but nagging sense that something is missing in his life? Nick’s problem is simple. It’s a problem of pedigree. He’s like the adopted child who grows up to obsessively search for a biological parent to discover his real roots. Nick has been raised with the expectation that he will accomplish great things,  but he lacks the pedigree to justify such exceptionalism. He has cultivated the appearance of greatness as a substitute for the substance of greatness.

Nick doesn’t realize it, but he has lost touch with the truth and the facts that accompany it.  He’s intelligent, yet he has lost the acumen to discern common sense.   He believes what he hears, or more accurately, what he wants to believe. Like his problem, Nick’s solution is simple: all he needs to do is open his eyes and follow the truth. But what truth?

The first necessary truth is one that has stood the test of time for 3,000 years: the supreme importance of one's pedigree. The Greek family serves as the anchor that provides this pedigree. Not in the sense that Nick’s ancestors were or weren’t aristocrats; Greeks have long abandoned the idea of royals. Nick refuses to acknowledge that he is a direct descendant of the most prolific creators of human intellectual excellence to have ever walked the Earth. No other race in recorded history has come close— as emphasized by the fact that the Greeks improved their adopted alphabet, enabling an accurate history to be recorded in the first place.

He minimizes the significance of his remarkable ancestry. What Nick also doesn’t recognize is that despite 600 years of subjugation and suffering, his family prevailed over their Ottoman rulers in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Not only did they triumph, but they also discovered the one place on Earth whose founding fathers embraced the Hellenism cultivated by his race and used its principles to establish America. These founding fathers adhered to Plato’s warnings to protect citizens from a government with excessive power. Nick fails to see that he is the latest embodiment of generations of intellectual exceptionalism— a lineage that surpasses all others.

The second necessary truth is that he is already equipped with an advanced education, albeit laced with the dogmas and delusions of his instructors. If he only embraces the reality of seeing the world as it is, he could make it better. This slight shift in perception could be life-transforming. For example, if Nick researched his ancestry, he would discover that his great-grandfather did not come from Turkey as he thought. He came from Asia Minor, also known as Anatolia, which was first populated by migrating Ionian Greeks more than a thousand years before any Turks knew of the existence of Asia Minor. Asia Minor became the center of the Byzantine Empire and thrived for a thousand years without a hint of inflation—an economic concept Nick understands well. Only a hundred years ago, his ancestral homeland became known as Turkey.

Instead of avoiding the label of being the son of a Greek eatery family, he can embrace his life as a victory over 600 years of slavery and a celebration of his prominence in a culture that venerates the very principles his ancestors upheld throughout history and laid at his feet. If Nick were to stop viewing friends and family as belonging to two different worlds, his friends might see his family as a personal strength rather than the cliché he imagines. Yet, Nick points out that 3,000 years of exceptionalism don’t pay his student debt. Nor do they provide the financial means to achieve great things. He needs something more tangible to help him in his current circumstances. Really, Nick? Haven't you seen it yet?

Nick’s family is part of a Greek community that feels more like an extended family. If Nick is searching for better employment, this extended family, including his parents, likely would search their contacts to help. Someone in that community might know someone who can offer him that opportunity.  Imagine a few hundred families engaged in networking— or does he believe he would fare better with his hundreds of Facebook friends?

Part of Nick’s problem is that he believes his parents' Greek community is synonymous with the Greek Orthodox Church community. He doesn’t identify with it— it’s just not relevant to his life in a secular world, and Nick certainly doesn’t want to be a hypocrite. Could it be that Nick just doesn’t understand what his parents’ community is about?

Nick clearly never embraced history during his education. The Greek Orthodox community is synonymous with his family’s heritage. One significant reason for this may be linked to the historical fact that when the Ottoman Turks conquered much of Asia and half of Europe, the Sultan chose not to exterminate all of the Christians and Jews. He needed people who would contribute to his empire and pay taxes. He simply doubled the taxes on all non-Muslims and mandated their indentured servitude. The only element of Greek life that was freely permitted under the oppression of the Ottomans was their religion. Indeed, under the Ottoman millet system, an Ottoman subject was identified by their religion. Thus, the Greek Orthodox Church became the anchor holding Greek culture together. So much so that the church evolved into more than just a religion; it defined and preserved Greek culture.

Nick may not identify with the church’s heavy use of symbolism, but he must understand it before dismissing it. Symbolism can be the only source of hope in a person’s life. Perhaps it differs from the symbol of the designer logo Nick boasts on his clothing, but it still is a symbol. Embracing a symbol of a people's victory over a brutal enemy clearly trumps being part of a herd that worships the very definition of “veneer.”

Nick will admit that everyone experiences joy each year at the church festival. However, the warmth of that weekend, once the visitors go home, continues all year long within the community— another feature unattainable through social media. More compelling than being in the millennial generation, Nick is also part of the Hellenic Diaspora that began 8,000 years ago. People of Greek heritage reside and have assimilated into every country in the world. It will take the Greek Diaspora coming together to demonstrate to the current world the benefits of Western civilization. Nick's millennial generation is the most critical and influential subgroup of this Greek Diaspora.

Epilogue:

I am happy to report that Nick finally opened his eyes and saw the truth. His dumpy apartment is no longer a source of embarrassment for him. By comparison to his ancestors, it’s a palace. He continues to wear his designer clothes, but that is because he can’t yet afford to replace them. He may continue to buy designer clothes in the future, but those purchases will be made because he’s fond of the design— not the designer. Nick has since allowed his friends to “hang” with his family, which has produced a negative effect— now he can’t get his friends to leave because they, too, have found an extended family. Nick has embraced Hellenism to the point that he enjoys helping others by using his hard-earned business skills. While his debt still looms, he no longer worries about it. It’s just another item on his to-do list.

Nick finally sees that the most significant resource in today’s devolving world is the Hellenic American youth who, like him, was raised with a double dose of Hellenism—Greek and American. He sees America as Greece 2.0 and believes he and his generation represent the small group of Hellenes who can overcome enormous odds, as their ancestors did.

He is now secure in knowing he will accomplish everything he can. His pedigree is a paragon of human accomplishment, and he is infused with the Greek essence and appreciation of beauty and perspective. Nick’s new hero walked the Earth more than two millennia ago. He believes Socrates is his personal mentor. Nick is fulfilling his destiny and stands ready to pay it forward through his children.

By the way, someone in the community knew someone else who got him a better position at another firm. Oddly enough, this firm is a restaurant chain in dire need of an MBA.

He hasn’t found his soulmate yet, but he’s confident that he will recognize her when she appears.

[1] Warner Bros. Released 1981.