The Good Fight

I got home last night from a week of family, sunshine, good food and gelato in Italy. It was a much-needed respite from my everyday life.

And while Tuscany this time of year is still a bit brown, green was cropping up everywhere – as my sister’s terrible allergies could attest. It was wonderful to watch the countryside and cities come alive, and to live a different sort of life for a little while.

Lately it seems that I’ve been just going through the motions of each day without really taking into account what makes them up, which I suppose is how we mostly go through life – especially during stressful or busy seasons.

But Italy woke me up. And if I’m honest, I think God had been trying to wake me up even before then. To the fact that I should be soaking in life more. Paying attention to the people and situations around me. Paying attention to the things that matter.

In Orvieto, we stayed in a little bed and breakfast that was, as my dad would say, a Mary Poppins kind of a place – practically perfect in ever way. In Cinque Terre, my sister and I went on a hike along a mountainous path overlooking the sea. The freshness of the air alone restored me. In Siena, we stayed at an old nunnery that overlooked the city and woke up to see the duomo bathed in light. In Rome, the warmth and beauty of the days and food more than made up for the mobs of people we encountered almost everywhere we went.

It’s really hard to slow down when you’re back in reality, though. To not always wish away my time – if only I were back in Italy, in New York or if only I had such and such a life or were with so and so.

It is easy, in a way, to miss things – even when you choose to live far away. It is much harder to live a life in the present, much harder to choose the important thing – or to see the important thing for that matter – when the urgent is frantically calling you. That’s the battle, I suppose, of our modern life. (And, I suspect, of the ancient life too.)

After a week (mostly) away from the madding crowd, I feel ready again to fight.