Anticipation is one of the best parts of life. When I was twenty-two years old, I quit my job playing professional basketball in Ireland, but before I retreated home to the States, head down, embarrassed, I disappeared on a backpacking trip through Europe. I took a cheap flight from Dublin to Paris, then a train to Milan, then one to Rome, Rome being in my mind the climax of this spontaneous journey. I had studied Latin for three years. And after that, or perhaps because of that, I became fascinated with the Roman Empire, in particular the Colosseum. I kept a journal on this trip, and I remember pulling out that small black notebook while sitting in my seat on the train, watching the Italian countryside pass. I wrote, detailing on those pages how I assumed the Colosseum would make me feel. I had conjured images of it, an approximation, from all the movies and news stories and pictures in textbooks I had seen over the years. And I explained to myself, writing sentence after sentence, what it would feel like to stand inside a piece of history: I imagined the collective energy of the millions who had come before, who had passed through the same space. I imagined that this energy, like a ghost, would make my hair stand on end. I would hear the echoes of those ancient crowds, bloodthirsty, human, wanting. I imagined myself standing within this swirl of energy and emotion, as this was a place that had housed so much of both.
I never imagined feeling nothing. And yet, once the train pulled into Rome and I wended my way to the Colosseum, I remember standing inside, and there it was, an emotion impossible not to name: disappointment. The birds chirped. The sky was a lovely blue with the occasional milky cloud. Beads of sweat pinned my shirt to my back. I looked around at the crumbling structure, at the other people exploring the space. I closed my eyes. I willed something, anything, to wash over me. Nothing did. I was still just—me. The same me, with the same worries and concerns and hopes, the ones that somehow I had imagined would be made small by the force of history. My anxiety over quitting basketball in Ireland, and how puzzling my future now appeared to me, had dislodged me from the present. I felt very much like an astronaut slowly floating away from her spaceship, desperate for a force to push me back to safety. Somehow I had hoped that standing in the Colosseum would be like consulting a medium, allowing me to stand among the collective yearning of the masses. And this would make me feel less alone, would be the gust that pushed me back to safety. But I was unchanged. After a while I left the famous structure, and on my walk to the hostel where I was staying, I bought an apple from a corner store. It tasted the same as any other.
On the train back to Paris, I again pulled out my notebook and attempted to explain what I had felt, and what I had not felt, and why I had not felt it, and what that lack of feeling might mean. And I landed on one specific thing: perhaps some things really are better left to the imagination.
When I got home to the States, one of my friends asked about my backpacking trip. I explained the highlights and the adventure, and then I said, “But I went to the Colosseum and, I don’t know, it just didn’t do anything for me. I had built it up in my mind I guess, but I just stood there, disappointed.” My friend looked at me and frowned, and in that second I considered for the first time that maybe blame for the disappointment I had felt lay not with the Colosseum, but with me. My friend then said, “I’ve always wanted to go to Rome—don’t bum me out!”
From then on, when people asked about my trip and I showed them pictures—the tangible kind, from those yellow disposable cameras—if they asked how amazing the Colosseum was, I found myself lying, saying, “Amazing—so amazing.” I had somehow decided it was my social and moral obligation to have loved this trip, loved this adventure, and specifically loved the Colosseum, so as not to rob others of even a moment of that vicarious, transferrable excitement—of their own joy of anticipation. And also, expressing any kind of disappointment with a trip to Rome is unpopular, especially when articulated to anyone who hasn’t been lucky enough to go.
I tell this story to illustrate that all of us feel an obligation to optimism and happiness when we’re around others. If you break down my trip to the Colosseum, which occurred before the advent of social media and smartphones, you’ll notice that my behavior—before, during, and after—almost mimics the way I would act today. As I approached the structure, I built it up in my mind by writing it into life to pique my own interest. Today, I’d likely look through tagged pictures of the location on Instagram. After my visit, I quickly shifted to telling a superficial but upbeat story about the moment, not very different from what I might do now, which is tag myself on Instagram in a picture at the landmark with the hashtag “amazing.”
The main, glaring difference between now and then is that in 2005, I was at least somewhat present during the moment I was actually standing in the Colosseum. I took one or two pictures on my camera, but I wasn’t considering the social capital of an Instagram post from that geo-tagged location. I had enough space to consider myself in relation to the millions of ancient Romans who had climbed those steps (even if I failed in fully connecting to that history). Now, today, I fear I would only consider all the others who were Instagramming from there and elsewhere, and how the image I produced might compare. Eventually, the story of my 2005 trip to the Colosseum would become a kind of performance—but it wasn’t yet, not while I stood inside those ancient ruins, feeling not much of anything.