"I looked at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. ... Even in the eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation."
~ Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
This paragraph in the first 74 pages of the book hit me smack in the face. I can't even recollect reading this the last time I read this book last summer and yet this time, something new, something different, reading with new eyes and understanding with new experiences to draw from, it's an important message I am carrying with me.
Humans, like monuments, are each individual in nature, susceptible to changes with the times but always a vessel for some purpose that we may or may not be aware of. And because we are dynamic, changing and always a vessel for a higher good, to stay attached to those ideas or representations of who we think we might be may or may not be keeping us from serving some new and amazing purpose. Although, in the bigger picture of things, we do bring along the ideas and representations that stand the test of time because some of them are innately a part of us and seeming industructable, sometimes letting it all fly away with the wind and doing something different can often show us different aspects of ourselves we might have never seen.
Our hearts will always stand the test of time no matter how chaotic our lives may seem because somewhere in our being there's a strength like no other force we come across. And when we realize we have that strength we find our faith and the courage to trust ourselves and this journey we are on and that regardless of the seeming chaos around us, everything is unfolding exactly as it should for everyone and everything. And among what we might perceive as complete imperfection...really, it's all perfect.
So to the Augusteum, whose original intent was to be a masoleum, that now stands empty waiting for whatever is next, thank you for your incarnation at that moment of being an inspiration for one writer to see the strength and spirit in what seems to be a broken and ruined piece of work. In our connectedness beneath what may seem to be a broken or ruined exterior of a fellow sister or brother there is also that strength and it's our job to do what we can or what we are guided to do to see through that rough exterior and recognize that strength in each other and if need be embody it, transcend it and encourage those who choose to ignore it, to acknowledge it too.
