Secular and Greek-Orthodox way of life

Living with a disability in Greece for more than 50 years , and having traveled in most countries, I had the opportunity to experience various attitudes towards disability. In this book, the author depicts reality in a special way. Reading this book, I went back to my life and I approached it through the viewpoints that it describes. It was a surprise for me to realise that the approaches that I considered as absolute, appeared, in fact, as inadequate!

According to my personal experience, the society faces persons with disabilities, like us, with indulgence. When I was a child, in the village that I lived, the teacher and the priest, as important persons of the community, were very tolerant with me. Some rules, strict perhaps for those years, despite being common for all children, were not applied to me. Of course, this made me happy. Nevertheless, nowadays, reevaluating the situation, I believe that I lost experiences which would have possibly contributed to a more complete formation of my personality. I remember with gratitude a teacher who was the only one who pushed me to participate in sports!

I believe that this book presents equally the secular and the Orthodox approaches to disability, disclosing some folds which although most of us have experienced, we usually overlook.

Demetrios Anatolitis

Paralympic winner