My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome!

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Photo of My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome! by Hardik Khandelwal

The ruins and the remains, piles of brick structures around, started life as a glorious mausoleum, built by Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his family for all of eternity. It must have been difficult for the Emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus- worshipping empire.

Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal

How could Augustus have possibly forseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aqueducts destroyed by the barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would be empty of its people, and it would take several centuries before Rome would ever recover the population that she had boasted during her glorious period ?

Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Palatine Museum - Roman Forum, Via di San Gregorio, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Palatine Museum - Roman Forum, Via di San Gregorio, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Palatine Museum - Roman Forum, Via di San Gregorio, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.

And there I looked at the Augusteum, and there were several thoughts gushing through me. It came to me that life ain't that chaotic, after all. It may be the pursuit of our perceptions, about ourselves and about others, which brings forth the ideas and notions about the things that surround us. This particular place warned me to never get attached to any obsolete idea about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. We transport our minds to some other time or place or world, where it can be safe and insulated from the pain of day-to-day life.

Photo of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Palatine Museum - Roman Forum, Via di San Gregorio, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of Roman Forum, Via della Salara Vecchia, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy by Hardik Khandelwal

This very place made me to hold the opinion that one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. It is like sometimes that one gets so attached to the past ‘who one was’ and wants to keep it as a living edifice of one's so called glorified existence. Existence is today, now or never. Our past glories must not make us. Times are never equanimous, one is not what one was or what one could have been, what one is today, is what one is.

Photo of My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome! by Hardik Khandelwal

Then I looked around this place for one last time, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe life isn't so chaotic, it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Probably, ruin may be a gift, ruin may be a treasure, ruin may be the road to transformation.

Photo of My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome! by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome! by Hardik Khandelwal
Photo of My Takeaways From The Ruins And Remains Of Rome! by Hardik Khandelwal

It feels like a precious wound, one would not let go off because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same, settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Our distraction needs to be planned and moderated in bite-sized chunks. We can’t binge on distraction.

- Hardik