Lessons From the Eternal City

As I’m writing this, I’m in Rome, where I’m touring with my wife before the IL Fast Track Europe conference this weekend. It’s been on my bucket list ever since my dad passed on his love of ancient Rome when I was a kid. We’ve seen the biggies… the Forum, the Colosseum, the Capitoline Museum, the Vatican, and the Pantheon, right outside our hotel window.

As someone with an historical cast of mind, this “old stuff” got me thinking… confirming lifelong suspicions. Here’s what I’ve concluded after seeing the residue of the greatest empire of the ancient western world up close and personal.

1. It’s better to build than to destroy. The Flavian Amphitheatre (a.k.a. The Colosseum) was built on the half-finished site of Nero’s Domus Aurea, whichhis ego demanded. Tens of thousands of working people were evicted to make way for his “Golden House.” His successors recognised how this decadence appeared and repurposed the area for bread and circuses. The awe-inspiring Colosseum is still there. Nero is now a popular joke amongst the locals.
2. If you build, build well. Roman engineering skill was unparalleled. It’s not just the incredible things they built, or that they accomplished their designs with wax pads and abaci. It’s the fact that they chose to allocate massive amounts of public funds to do things the right way—even when working people were the main beneficiaries.
3. If the things you build fall, build again. Rome is a 3000-year-old building site. Reconstruction never stops. Christianity transformed the pagan city into the seat of its Church, accepting and repurposing structures like the Pantheon for their own god. Every secular ruler of the city has incorporated what the ancients left into their own designs. No matter how many times the city has been sacked, it has been rebuilt: the Eternal City.
4. Nothing lasts forever. I must admit to a twinge of resentment at the many Pontifices Maximi (popes) who stamped their designs over Roman structures and edifices. I would have restored them for posterity out of admiration. But that’s not the way history—or life—works. The Romans looted Pharaonic obelisks from Egypt and put them atop pedestals dedicated to their emperors; the Church put bronze crosses on their pointed tops to stamp their own authority. Who knows what comes next? The only constant is change.

These observations might seem banal. But to me they are profound confirmations of long-gestating life lessons. Changing one’s perspective has a tendency to do that.

Other countries have touched my soul in similar ways. Imagine how empty life would be without ever taking the risk of visiting them!

In our little way, that’s what International Living sets out to do… give you the tools to let far away places touch your own soul.