Terence Cantarella

In the first century A.D., Saint Paul the Apostle was tied to a stone pillar in Pafos, Cyprus and given 39 lashes as punishment for preaching Christianity to the locals. In 1989 A.D., as a disorderly 13-year-old, I sat atop that very same pillar and casually smoked a cigarette while two like-minded friends sprawled out on the surrounding Roman mosaics and blew smoke rings into the air.

The ruins are fenced off now. There’s a plaque to commemorate the ancient ordeal and the site has even been added to the UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. But straddling that piece of ancient archaeology remains a fond memory for me—not because of the false sense of entitlement or exclusivity—but because of the nostalgia and experience of living in a time and culture where there were few rules.

As kids in Cyprus, we drove motorbikes and cars without licenses and if the police stopped us we said that we left our documents at home. They’d wave us on and sometimes even chuckle at the flimsy lie. There were no parking meters to worry about, or even parking spaces for that matter, and speed limits were merely suggestions. We drank at the local bar before we ever had hair on our faces and people, adult people, bought us rounds. We spent many nights sleeping outdoors on beaches and rooftops—because it was fun—and no one ever came to chase us away. Swimming was simply a matter of pulling the car over onto the sand and jumping into the sea whenever the fancy grabbed us. And, of course, hitchhiking was a perfectly acceptable means of transport, too. Then there were the ruins—the Roman temples, Hellenic tombs, and Byzantine castles that we turned into our personal playgrounds.

An acquaintance once described life in modern, developed, western societies as having “no grace.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I’ve always interpreted it as meaning that life is more rigid, less impulsive, more restricted, and less charming than the one I knew as a kid. My youth was defined by freedom—freedom from tightly enforced laws, from western ideas of accountability when things go wrong, and from the predictability of living in a carefully managed society where reason is king. It rendered me ill-prepared for later life in America where I discovered pay-for-access beaches, traffic tickets, background checks, liability, service standards, rationale, procedural policies, and a cultural obsession with “making sense.”

There is a danger in romanticizing developing nations, though. They’re often rife with traffic-related deaths, corruption, professional-level incompetence, and an ineffectual, laizze-fare attitude that can stifle much-needed development. But the charms outweigh the drawbacks for many people. Retirees from America and the U.K. regularly flock to developing nations, not just because of the lower cost of living, but because of the easy lifestyle. Younger people, with foreign roots and language skills, often seek out niches for themselves in their ancestral countries because of the prospect of a more interesting life.

There are many aspects of the developed world which most people would hate to go without. Unfortunately though, you can’t have both—the charms of loosely governed societies rarely coexist with modern efficiency and order. Cyprus has changed since 1989, as have many other nations that were then in a transitional period between traditional and modern life. At some point, the government, and then the culture, of emergent nations make a conscious decision to upgrade their ways and mentality, and once the process begins, it’s impossible to go back.

You can still bribe security guards in Egypt to let you climb the pyramids at night, you can sunbathe nude in southern Europe undisturbed, you can jump a train in India without anyone protesting, and you can drive in many parts of the world with little more than horn-blowing skills. Most northern Mediterranean countries have not yet reached the stage at which they rigorously adhere to strict laws and petty regulations, either.

One thing is certain though, it’s been a long time since an undisciplined thirteen-year-old could climb on top of an ancient ruin of religious significance, light a cigarette and say something like, “Hey, you guys wanna rent motorbikes and go get drunk out by the sea caves?”

No grace, indeed.