Culture: Who Has It?
As the first term flew by as always, I found myself at the last few days of the week waiting for the annual snowfall to halt this capital to a standstill. It was that time of year again where students of all ages receive that deserved day off and commuters laze in front of the TV still in their pajamas. But it was also time for holidays and for me, that means a holiday. My choice of destination to close off a second decade of mine was Iraq. For some reason I had avoided this lost country as it is rarely seen in its positive light and why should it be? It is recovering from liberation from Saddam Hussein yet still fighting a civil war over a difference in history of over 1400 years ago. However, this country has seen the rise and fall of some of the greatest civilizations this world has seen and deserves a visit at minimum.
Since the snow did fall and decided to stay this time, my transit flight to Rome was delayed by four hours and thus missed my flight to Damascus and never made it to Iraq. Nevertheless the flight to our first city of Iraq called Najaf was available the next day and all we had to do was see Rome for a day – oh the struggles we face in life. So we saw Rome in a day, literally. We paced it from the Colosseum to Vatican City to be blessed by the Pope in a day and the holiday went on as planned.
One thing that left me in awe of Rome, a city I had never seen, was its culture. We like culture and Italy us definitely one that doesn’t hide it. We like it because we learn new aspects of civilization and enjoy the differences we share. It is bizarre because I wandered why does Italy have such a rich culture. For me the countries that have the most engulfing culture are Iran, India, China and now Italy. All these countries have something in common and it is not just great food but history. These countries have without doubt, produces the best civilizations we see today ( I know, I know Iran produced India but let’s not get technical). If we look at what these countries produce, we see paintings to poetry and martial arts to hospitality. Perhaps this is due to the conflicts it has been through especially between tribes within its country but I think it is due to the age of the civilization. Romans and Persians are some of the older civilizations which have been carried forward and maintained today. However, these countries have not created its culture through religion but rather seen the results of culture on many religions and for me, culture is irrelevant of religion. In fact India, which has five major religions, has the most overwhelming culture today.
We see the opposite in America and the UK where there was and has been since, one major religion with few tribal civil wars over history and are, in comparison, relatively new such as America of a youthful age of five hundred years compared to China of a thousand plus years.
Traveling into new cultures opens eyes as we are forced o=to break routine to become open minded. Traveling, in addition, with people creates friendship and the like minds will create ideas and the larger minds will create events. If you have travelled before of great experience then share it with people, if not, then I highly recommend you to do so.
