Beyond the destination: Nicos Hadjicostis and the art of philosophical journeys
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
You might think your early thirties is a bit young to have a midlife crisis, but Nicos Hadjicostis was always precocious. By all accounts he had a smooth beginning to a conventional life, but despite his success, he was assailed by a growing sense of lack. So he began his search, first through words “…more accurately ideas, but ideas are expressed in words, so yeah.”
He went to live in the book-filled holiday home overlooking Paphos, where he discovered his new teachers, Jung, Seneca, Sri Aurobindo, “who have had an influence on my life.”
Precocious crisis
However, no matter how good the philosophy, how fine the view, how pleasant the solitude, if you want to scratch that existential itch, you can only stay in one place for so long. Four years was enough for Hadjicostis.
If there were something more, he would not locate it in the second-hand experience of others. “When you ask the universe—a little New Age but I like it—the universe responds…the stronger the request, the stronger the response. The trick is to recognize it…” So “I left my country without any plan and then the plan started to form itself”. He travelled through Europe for two years— St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, before exploring the USA.
Realising that he knew “too little of the world at large”, he kept going. “I was in search of meaning”. To date he has ventured deep into every continent, travelling solo until he met Jane, who has been matching her steps to his ever since.
After about a year of aimless wandering, he ” came up with the idea of capturing the soul of the country…you can never completely capture, let’s say, the soul of Japan, OK… you can come close… the more wisely you choose your path.”
This might involve “something as simple as slurping your soup”, or experiencing another source of joi de vivre.
Leaving without a plan
He agrees that travel is not about the destination; it is about the esoteric journey. “When you capture the soul, the experience is completely mind opening…and you understand in your very bones what it is to be a member of that society… you start seeing the world through your own eyes, your Greek eyes, then you see the same world through your Chinese eyes…. by seeing it from a different perspective your world widens.”
Although Hadjicostis was always involved in writing, publishing his own magazine, called Introspection, during his twenties, he maintains that he didn’t actually become a writer till his fifties. His first book, Destination Earth, suggests that his main interest is travel, but he disputes this. For him travel is a means to an end, a way to interrogate reality, because Hadjicostis is not just a traveller, in the main he is a philosopher, “…the best travel writers are philosophers.”
He is fearless in his travel, willing to brave places where the more experienced counsel caution. Insisting that there is “no unsafe place”, he neutralizes danger by making friends and establishing lifelong connections, lack of language notwithstanding, although he admits that translation apps are a game changer.
Capturing the ‘soul’ of a place
He writes with great certainty: words like ‘seems’ and ‘perhaps’ have no place in his personal glossary, explaining that it is “characteristic of philosophical writing. You make a point and you make it as forceful as possible…a philosophic tradition… The confidence comes from intense study of the subject over many years … I know what I can say about it, and …can express my ideas.” His first principle is that he must write something new about a subject, something that has not been said before. So “there is at least one new idea in every piece of mine, … if not completely new, the angle from which I explore it will be new.” Writing only when he feels inspired, and after a long fermentation, he feels he has produced relatively little. However, that ‘little’ includes three books and a series of essays that he shares online through his website and substack (The Tuesday Letter), but “I would have liked to have done more…to produce a voluminous opus of work.” Yes but what of quality over quantity? “I have always written just for myself, the best writing, by the way, you should address your audience but also yourself…Marcus Aurelius wrote one diary titled To Myself, and it has been with us for two thousand years, and remains relevant.”
Writing as inquiry, not record
When he writes he engages in a dialogue with his readers where no email goes unanswered because it is “always a conversation…when I read Cavafy I converse with him…so in my book, Conversing with Cavafy… I am dealing with his ideas and encouraging my readers to do the same”. But although philosophy is a querulous game—you have to defend your argument—he is always willing to be convinced, because he does not so much ask questions as demand answers.
His latest book, The Eternal Ragpicker aims to provide some of those answers, although it also raises more issues. It is a compilation of essays “on the human condition”, where he ponders time, love, uniqueness, connection, and if indeed we actually exist. What if Google has no record of us.
Hadjicostis’ writing reveals his essence; it is a map of his life. This is of course, true of all writers, but especially so of him. Just as he is fearless in his travels, he is fearless in the questions he poses, and in what he is willing to divulge.
There have been consequences because there are always consequences. He lives far from cities to remain connected with the landscape, “modern man has lost touch with nature…it’s about connection with Being on a deeper level…each country is different”. He seeks out the remote regions of the countries he visits, for example, Australia’s Red Centre, the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea, and the isolated ethnic villages of China.
He does not go as far as spiritualizing landscape, although “I follow the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, I believe there is a pervading Reality that exists beyond what we see. That there is a spirit in the world and a meaning in everything that happens.”
There is a photo of a seven-year-old Nicos in the kitchen in Melissovounos, in tones of yellows and browns, a very seventies style image, showing an excited little boy, full of energy, bursting with questions. That same energy and insatiable curiosity remain undiminished, though perhaps a little corralled by age and experience. Hadjicostis has at his command the entire philosophical canon from both east and west, which, along with his travels, he has used to satisfy that gargantuan curiosity, and he is not finished yet.
*Kiriaki Orfanos is a culture and arts writer, and researcher, based in Sydney, and regular contributor to Neos Kosmos this is a feature she wrote while in Greece.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
