My eyes were drawn to the old man as my family’s long rental van pulled into the ancient village. He was leaning over in deep sleep, the edge of the sidewalk seemed to function as his bed — a choice that his ragged clothes and unkempt beard seemed to suggest was not of his own accord. Among the mesmerizing views of the rolling Cretan hills, my view was fixated upon this single man.

No sooner than my family and I stepped foot into the town circle did he wake up with a certain bewilderment. Visitors were rare in Kefalas, and his startled face seemed to affirm this.

“Who are you?” He approached my father, studying his Cretan facial features.

Although my mediocre Greek-speaking abilities kept me out of the majority of this verbal exchange, his expression to my father’s reply told me enough.

“Gaitanis?” He couldn’t believe what he had heard.

Seventy years earlier, my family had said their goodbyes to this village in hopes of opportunity, which was so rare in Greece at the time. Although they were determined to carry on their Greek culture, they had left behind a sense of home. I never truly felt a connection to the homeland beyond the common traditions I learned from home and church — until this encounter.

As if he had been waiting for this moment his entire life, the man directed my father to the house, which had been labeled with our last name many years ago. Along the way, he eagerly engaged in conversation with us, taking the time to learn the names of my family members and inquiring how we have spent our time in America. Among his constant eagerness to instill within me the sense of culture our family has preserved for so long, my father once taught me a popular Greek phrase: philoxenia. More of a philosophy than a phrase, these words teach us to love the stranger.

At home in the United States, we are generally taught to stay far away from strangers. Yet, I can’t resist my constant hunger for learning the stories of those too often unheard. Society teaches us to ignore the homeless man asking for money on the side of the street, to keep conversation minimal with a store clerk or mailman, to closely guard who we let into family gatherings. This translates all too well into our dismissive nature toward immigrants.

This unassuming man has transformed the way I think about the world and people in general. Although halfway across the world, he taught me we truly are more connected than we think. 

I came to understand the true meaning of philoxenia through this encounter. The warm and welcom- ing embrace of a stranger inspires me to extend this through my life’s work. My passion is to understand different ways of life in order to realize how similar we truly are. Eventually, I strive to extend philoxenia to immigrants seeking a better life in America, not unlike my grandfather who made the journey two generations before me.