Just got back from a quick trip to Rome the other day. If you’ve ever been to Rome I’m sure you have enjoyed seeing the epic sights like the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain or Vatican City.
This time it was a short trip with some meetings right behind Tiburtina Station, one of the main train & bus stations of the city. Even though it was a quick trip, my eyes were opened to what I started referring to as ‘The Other Rome’ – there’s a whole different side to the city that many tourists and visitors won’t see much of.
One of Rome’s nicknames is ‘The Eternal City.’ It has a reputation of history, culture, power, glory and glamour. An issue that many big-name cities have to deal with is that there is the city that all the visitors get to experience… and then there’s the city where the real people live.
Rome has been having a hard time to keep up dealing with its trash. It’s not very glamorous, but it’s a real issue, of real people in a real city. Being real while staying ‘attractive’ is not easy. Not for a city, not for people.
More often than not, the best way to deal with our junk is simply picking up the phone and saying, “I’m sorry I made a mess of this, how can I make things right?”
Could it be that being real actually is what makes us attractive for others to follow our leadership? But that doesn’t mean that we leave our trash out forever. We’re real with it, we deal with it. You got this. You can do more than you think.