Heroes Not Zombies

“Emerveillement” is one of my most favourite French words. It means wonder, amazement, marvel…..words like that. You get the idea? I am a “wonderer” – Curiosity may be one of my core features. I’m sure that helped me to be a good doctor. I found every single patient fascinating. Monday mornings for me were an opportunity to begin a new week of meeting new patients, hearing their stories, working with them to make sense of their illness and to understand both who they were and what they were experiencing.

But my sense of curiosity, of wonder, of “emerveillement” was never focused solely on human beings. Every day my mind fills with questions, I find myself astonished by something I see, hear, or read. New discoveries delight me. New knowledge thrills me. And perhaps nothing pleases me more than achieving a better understanding of something.

This photo is one I took during several visits I’ve made to Segovia over the last few years. Surely it’s Segovia’s most impressive feature! It’s an enormous aqueduct built by the Romans (yes, the Romans!) to bring water from the countryside into the heart of the town.

I mean, just look at it! Isn’t it astonishing? What a conception! What a feat of engineering! What a vast labour, heaving those stones, cutting them to the right size, putting them into the correct positions! The aqueduct didn’t have a pump. As far as I know, Romans didn’t have pumps…..well not machine ones anyway. No, instead they built this impressive structure so that water would flow continuously downhill along the length of the high channel. Seriously impressive! Human genius!

But there’s more….because not only is it an incredible solution to the problem of how to get clean water to the population in the town, but just look at it…..it’s beautiful. It’s a work of art.
Nowadays we would be more likely to cut a trench, lay some pipes and then cover them up. Not the Romans. They created a thing of beauty which was also a solution.

I can’t help but think we’ve gone too far down the road of “utilitarianism”, “short term thinking” and “profit taking” these days. How many of the water supply mechanisms made in the last century will still be functioning and looking beautiful two thousand years later.

The human genius is not just in finding solutions. It’s in creating beauty, and in seeing far enough forwards to make things which can last. We need a bit more of that.