The Temple of Delphi

A personal essay

I was standing at the precipice of civilization and its reversion back to wilderness, in the ruins of the Temple of Delphi, up high in the mountains of Greece, filled with wonder at the sight I beheld. The smell of alpine plants, cedar, and pines, the feel of the cold wind on my face, the sight of the worn, slanted steps that countless pilgrims had placed their feet upon, all these sensate pleasures combined to bring me to my knees, spiritually.

How could I, an American, who is so used to being around nothing that is not new, modern, made to be disposed of, be surrounded by the remains of millennia past? Could it truly be that the ruins that I was now in had been visited by Socrates, thousands of years ago? It must be, for the tour guide keeps repeating that fact. Yet, my mind cannot wrap itself around the truth.

What is it to last a millennia and do we as innovators of the disposable lifestyle have any hope for our civilization to last, to be studied, by those who come to be the future students of antiquity? Do we want our civilization and its byproducts to last that long?

That is what I considered, as I hiked up the steps to visit the now gone Oracle of Delphi. My question for her would have been, “do you foresee my creative self, lasting the test of generations, or am I doomed to be forgotten like countless other artists and writers?”

I imagine that she, as she inhaled the hallucinatory gases of the mountain, would say something cryptic and universal, such as, “Know Thyself and to Thyself be True.” That is all we can ask for isn’t it? Why worry about whether we will have a legacy beyond our years for that is not for us to consider or decide.

As I stand back there now in my memory at the entrance to the Oracle’s chambers, I look out and see the mountains of Greece that stand tall, despite the wearing-down nature of time and erosion. Perhaps my work will be a mountain when I am gone, perhaps not, but given the opportunity to stand there and look upon the face of eternal time, at least from the human perspective, I know that the attempt to be timeless is worth the struggle. The mountains we ascend and the mountains we move to create are one in the same, differing only in the perspective from which we face them.

Related posts:

A severe vulnerability in Microsoft Azure has exposed data from thousands of clients of the cloud computing service, including some of the largest companies in the world. In the message, Microsoft…

Many writers have used fictional storytelling to analyse social issues. They pen down fictional stories not only to amuse their readers, but also to inform them about prevailing social, economic and…