I went out to Delphi yesterday and spent the day hanging out. It was such a wonderful experience for me to have again.

As time goes on, and it gets around to being 6 years after I graduated, it seems that the things in my life take on a different path. When I was in Europe, it was my ultimate focus, and was the “best part” of my life. Now that I am a mom, I am equally involved and in love with the task at hand.

My experience as a Delphi student and graduate should never be misestimated. It changed me from a bratty little kid with no understanding or respect for others around me to a responsible young lady who can get on in life and accomplish things I put the effort into accomplishing.

I have had a lot of lucky breaks one after the other in life, and I am thankful for them all. Being at Delphi gave me a chance to calm down and realize that an education was going to be a gift that would last me for the rest of my life. I don’t HAVE to rely on someone else to do something if I don’t want to. I have the ability to learn and gain skills that I find vital and important to my own life and my own survival.

When I left Delphi, I was sure that I was going to change the world. It was a sort of superhero complex. The truth of the matter is that I was going to settle into my niche in life and do what I could be set an example as a stellar member of society. That is what I was committed to do when I graduated. In a way, becoming a responsible leader in my own fields of interests is my own exchange for having been given the opportunity to be a Delphi graduate.

When I wandered off to Europe, I thought that I was going to have a good time. This was another amazing and life-altering experience. I saw a completely different world. I saw family values, community and history. I saw cultural traditions that were being handed down hundreds of generations. I saw the modern world creeping into the lives of the people and the way they have lived for hundred of years. Rather than letting it consume them, they embraced it and added it to their cultural heritage rather than letting it change the fundamental fabric of who they were.

I was touched. It wasn’t just about seeing all the art or swimming in the Mediterranean. It was about the care and kindness with which a mother would make lunch for her family. Or the dedication with which the farmer brought produce into the city every day on the back of his donkey. It was about living life as a modern European under the blanket of a world of history and culture.

I came home completely changed. I realize that I was dedicated in life to raising a family correctly and to helping to enhance my community as a leader. I realize that through my actions that I have a chance to make a change in my local area that would increase the happiness of the people around me. I am a missionary for cultural change.

And it all starts right in my house. I enjoy farming and growing vegetables and making food from scratch. I guess my primary motivation in this was to help my sick husband. A close second was the fact that making food at home from scratch was much more economical. We were saving tons of money on food that would otherwise be gotten by eating out.

I then started to piece parts of the puzzle together. I learned a few things.

q Food is used as one of the prime cultural methods of handing down traditions. This is why I was so obsessed with the food of Greece. It was more than just the wonderful flavors. It was the fact that food takes center stage in celebrations and traditions of a whole group of people. The fast of Lent makes way for a lot of good seafood to be eaten. Easter brings with it the chance to roast a lamb. Sundays are the time for fresh bread. Christmas has its bread pudding. I challenge you to find a traditional thing that does not involve food. By getting myself in touch with the traditions and using the food traditions in my own house, I was increasing not only our connection as a family, but I was bringing us together and making us a happier unit.

q Making food from scratch connects me with my ancestors. It was a HUGE advance in society when it was learned that grains could be harvested, ground and turned into bread. The methods of bread making or kefir making or cheese making are ancient. It connects me through the ages with the people who came before me who dedicated their lives to perfecting the process. A lot of modern people in America today have left the food making to big companies. They are not connected to the land and to their ancestors in their food. Food doesn’t nourish the soul for them, it only nourishes the body. When I ground the wheat by hand on my grinding stone for my daughter’s birthday cake, I had incredible self-satisfaction that I cared and that I was doing something that connected her and I to the land and to the peoples of our past. It also showed how much I cared to give her something special. I went to the trouble to make the cake not from a box with a mix that have flour ground weeks or months ago and then chemically treated.

I could go on and on, but my point is that I have learned that I am caring for my family in ways I can’t imagine. We are happier as a family unit.

What if this could be applied on a broad scale across cities and countries. What if the modern family didn’t have to live in the suburbs so that they could have a job that would allow them to live in the suburbs. What if we changed our economy from an economy meant to buy stuff and turned it into a service-based economy. People would still be making money, but it would be a neighbor-helping-neighbor community rather than a neighbor-helping-self community. What if we could all bike or walk to work? What if husbands could support their families so that women would be able to take their traditional roles of maintaining a household? What if women were free to enhance the society and bring a community together? What if the bond of community were open and drawing?

I think that people would be happier. They would live longer, and we could quit depleting our planet of the very things that keep us alive.

More on this later.