OK, I confess … Florence is my favorite city in the world (so far …) … I remember my first trip there … the minute I arrived I knew I was HOME. The people, the art, the food, the art, the markets, the art, the smell in the air, the art … did I say the art? There is not a single street you can turn down or building you can look at that does not have the touch of an artist on it. It is difficult for me to keep grounded in the present there with so much of the past surrounding me. As one Italian man said to me, with a gentle chuckle, “My home is older than your whole country”. Touche!

But, this is not a travel blog … so onto my point … back many many moons ago when I was in art school I fell in love with the renaissance … it was the shift that captivated me.   Renaissance, literally meaning “Rebirth” in French, was an exquisite shift … a bridge between the middle ages and the modern age. It was a shift in culture, creation, invention … literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and every aspects of intellectual inquiry … nothing was left untouched. The old was redefined by the new. The past was not forgotten but it was surpassed.

When will your renaissance be? Isn’t it time? No matter how old you are, or how much “truth” your experience has gained you so far, perhaps it is time for a rebirth, a renewing, a refresh … a new you. I am by no means suggesting that there is anything wrong with the current you … simply that when we are on autopilot to our old habits we leave no space for anything new. As a matter of a fact, when we are entrenched and caught in our old ways of thinking, behaving, doing … it may not even occur to us that we could be, do or have something new … new thoughts, new perceptions, new emotions … new anything.

Today could be the beginning of your renaissance … you could discover the Renaissance Man or Woman inside you … let it begin with curiosity and imagination … do things differently today. Allow yourself to start small … take a different route to a regular place, sit differently in your chair, use a different color of paint or lens in your camera and/or have a conversation you have never had. No renaissance happens overnight … it is one small change after another that adds up to this kind of re-birthing.

O, and enjoy yourself while you are at it!