Clemente

Our next door neighbour is Clemente. Italian-Australian, in his seventies, one of those people who makes a street feel like a community just by being in it.

We drop him a bottle of wine at Christmas. He came back with toys for the kids. Recently we found an Italian olive oil at the local market from Puglia, a brand called Clemente. We had to buy him a bottle.

On warm evenings Pavarotti drifts over the fence from his backyard, played as loud as the speakers will allow. There are worse things to hear on a Melbourne evening.

Every time he sees our family he says the same thing. You are blessed. He’s right. We are.

But something he mentioned stayed with me. Clemente has never been back to Italy. Never stood in front of the Colosseum. Never ridden a gondola in Venice. The country his family came from, the culture that runs through his name and his cooking and the way he talks, he hasn’t seen it as an adult.

I understand that travel isn’t always easy. Money, time, health are real obstacles that don’t disappear because someone tells you to just go.

But if you’re on the fence. If the trip keeps getting pushed to next year. If there’s a place that means something to you that you haven’t seen yet.

Go.

There are things travel gives that nothing else can replicate. Not the photos. Not the planning. The actual standing there, in the actual place, and feeling it.

Clemente owes it to himself to stand in front of the Colosseum. We all have our version of that.

Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder

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