My first impressions of Rome were not so favourable.  It seemed to be a city made of garbage and graffiti.  I saw it on the bus from the airport to the train station, and then again on the walk from the train station to the apartment.  Garbage and graffiti everywhere.

“You’re going to love Europe,” I told my niece.  “Everything here is so pretty.  The ornate buildings.  The immaculate gardens.  The cobblestone streets.  Everything.

No, not everything.  Definitely not the trajectory from the Termini train station to our humble abode.  Rome, I thought, is a dirty, unpalatable city.  I’m not so sure I like it here.

Today, however, was a different experience altogether.  Today we left our neighbourhood and visited Rome’s great sites: the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and Saint Peter’s Basilica.  This, I discovered, is an entirely different Rome.  It’s a swept-up Rome, a white-washed wonderland of art and antiquities sprouting up throughout a moving, breathing city.  It is, for all of its thousands of years of history, alive and vibrating, bringing the past into the present on every street corner.

The Trevi Fountain
The Pantheon
One of 14 obelisks scattered throughout the city
The Colosseum
Vatican Square

And I am Rome.  I am a motley collection of spray paint and mosaics, of discards and masterpieces, spanning the breadth of human thought and experience in the recesses of my ever-vibrating mind.  A city is not just one thing.  A person is not just one thing.  I am a past and a present intertwined, a thrumming history waiting to unfold.

And I can choose.  I can choose what to set my eyes on.  I can choose to look downward, to see every piece of waste littering the streets, or I can choose the pinnacle of an obelisk and lest my gaze rest there.  I can choose where to direct my feet.  I can choose to stay put in Termini’s sketchy streets, or I can choose to set out and find the Pantheon.  I can choose to believe the ugly half-truths imposed on me by a skewed system, or I can choose to affirm goodness and beauty wherever it is to be found.

And there is much to affirm.  I have meaningful work during the year, and the opportunity to travel during my time off.  I have a rich musical life and a growing social circle.  I have dear friends dotting the globe, and an ever-supportive family at home.  I am loved without bounds, and I love in return.  My heart is a Trevi fountain of gratitude today.  I am Rome, throbbing, full of life.