Having seen all the key sites of Rome, today we decided to go further afield. We went to visit Hadrian's Villa which is about 40 mins east of Rome. It's quite an amazing site as the remains are still impressive and as an added bonus there are relatively few tourists. Having seen the ruins I thought it would be interesting to read Marguerite Yourcenar's Les Mémoires d'Hadrien which was on sale at the tourist shop. This goes against 2 firm rules that I have:
- never buying anything in a gift shop
- only buy books on kindle
Having broken both of these firm rules in one go I wonder if that is bad (breaking your own rules) or good (showing flexibility). On balance I'll go with positive. I think it is probably dangerous for any rule to be absolute (except taking cold showers). This is probably why I will not be following through with yesterday's religious conversion. Most (if not all) Religions tend to include unbreakable rules which bear no exceptions, this can easily lead to intransigence and intolerance of any other way. Ultimately it is always good to try a different way of doing things at least once. Isn't that the essence of humanity ? Contrary to animals, we do not have to be ruled by atavism or the genetic coding which has trained us to be a certain way, we can do things a different way. Then we can choose which is the best approach for the next time.
Thus, having tested a different approach I can safely say that I will not become a regular gift shop spender and that I will be returning to my Kindle policy (If only because I have no shelf space left).
No comments:
Post a Comment