Monday Minute #8
Be Something to Behold
Rome is my favorite place in the world. The glistening white travertine of the Trevi Fountain, the imposing yet eerie Colosseum, the sculpted feet the size of bulldogs jutting from the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, grip me to my core. But my favorite spot in Rome is not on any tourist map.
One day, escaping the oppressive heat and throngs of humanity, I meandered past the Teatro Marcello, aiming for the Portico D’Ottavia. Three ancient columns — part of a crumbling ruin — stopped me in my tracks. These columns shot high into the sky, connected by a lingering cornice, vestiges of a temple. Standing in a nondescript triangular plot of soil, grass, and pebbles, staring up at the trio of columns, I felt a jolt of electric current — like I stuck my finger in a light socket.
These columns made me feel tiny but expansive at the same time. I sensed the massiveness of the universe and the reality that I’m just one blip in a timeline of literally millennia of humans standing in that same cross-section of longitude and latitude. But I also felt a super-charge of motivation that I can, and must, do something worthwhile and big.
I thought of those columns this weekend when I read a cool (and timely) passage in a book by Michelle Tea: “You hunker down in the cellar of your heart, and when the debris stops falling from the sky, you crawl back out and behold the new day and the rest of your golden life.”
I like the word “behold.” It’s defined as “perceiving through sight or apprehension,” but, to me, it suggests an added layer of wonder or awe. When we behold, we don’t just see something; we linger for a moment and marvel at it.
When I think of what it means to “behold,” I think of that dusty spot in Rome. I think of those three formidable columns, and their urgent, electrified message to work hard and do something meaningful.
As we continue to “hunker in the cellars of our hearts,” is there something — an impactful feeling, a texture, an experience, a sight, a fragrance, a taste — we can behold right now? When we “crawl back out,” what will we behold? And most importantly, what are we going to make of the “rest of our golden lives”?
Personally, I don’t want to go back to “normal.” I don’t want to go back to business-as-usual. I want us to get out of our own way. I want us to behold our collective potential to do something bigger. What can we do today to start clearing out the debris and doing or creating something worth beholding?
