Ciao Roma!

I ended up waking up at about 6:30am (12:30am EST). As we were standing on campus for the last time waiting for the vans to take us to the airport, I was looking at the beautiful clouds in the bright blue sky, and someone said it was like Rome was taunting them with such a display and they would have felt less sad about leaving if it had been rainy or overcast. I disagreed, taking the perspective instead that it was a blessing to be able to see the beautiful blue of the sky and the spectacular clouds just one more time before we left – which I guess is a glass-half-full outlook, but I think there’s more than that. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis discusses how focusing on the end of an experience is toxic because it keeps us from appreciating what we have in the present, and while he talks about this mainly in the context of dealing with trials by reminding yourself that they will be over soon, I think the message also applies to allowing the end of a good experience to cloud your appreciation of it. During my freshman year of college, my therapist commented on my description of how, when I’m at campus, my home in Georgia feels far-away and in some way unreal or two-dimensional, and vice versa – there’s not much of an adjustment period because I am where I am and it doesn’t make sense to me to dwell on where I’m not. It may just be how my mind works, but it really helps me to focus on the present and live in the moment, which is really important because, for all intents and purposes, the present is all we really have, and we only have one chance to appreciate it before it’s gone.