Ordinary Outside, Extraordinary Inside
You don't need a fancy facade: Lessons from the Alhambra as we close out a year.
“They made them ordinary on the outside, beautiful on the inside.”
So said the tour guide about the multiple palaces of the ginormous Alhambra—me, wandering after him, mouth agape over this place.
My friend Angela had recommended this magical place,1 and I planned my Spain experiences around visiting it. She has recommended a number of things and is usually spot-on with her endorsements, but I’d never heard her speak so…meaningfully…of a place. Full disclosure: I didn’t know until that moment that the Alhambra wasn’t made-up. In my mind, it existed only in Washington Irving’s book, Tales of the Alhambra. Maybe this is why we travel—something about making places, history, peoples, and ideas real to us?
Speaking of travel, “recommendation travel” is my favorite type of travel. As in, a friend or a stranger gets that look in their eyes and says, “Oh, you simply must visit {fill in the blank}.” They could tell me to visit a landfill in a far distant city, and I will go—and probably also love it. Or, at the very least, get a story out of it.
A new friend I met at church in Athens, Wynette, told me I simply must visit Meteora in central Greece. I went and loved it.
My world-traveling aunt told me how much she loved Malta. I went and loved it..
A well-traveled and beautifully-souled new friend, Sue, shared with me that Uzbekistan is one of her favorite countries; I will go.
A local told me about a three-layered church in Rome, and fellow tourists told me I must see a small church housing three Caravaggio paintings. On the steps of the Caravaggio church—the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi—I had a long chat with a most interesting sexagenarian couple from the UK. She was slight, quiet but warm, and dressed conservatively. He was built like a tree, had bushy eyebrows and shoulder-length coarse hair, and was wearing a turtleneck, dangly pearl earrings, and women’s leather gloves.
Back to the Alhambra: My friend Heather and I rented a car to drive over from Seville. Every part of that was an adventure. Navigating the petrol station, a satellite car rental location, and unfamiliar road signs—”What do you think that one means?”—was fun.
But the real wonder of the day was exploring this exceedingly fascinating place. If any walls on Earth could talk, it would be the walls of the palaces in the Alhambra. Carved script adorns most of the walls and ceilings and tells much of the story and history of the place. The Arabic script also includes catchy phrases we might read on fortune cookies today: "Be sparing with words and you will go in peace."2
I remember our guide also saying that the insides of Alhambra places were typically ornate and luxury, but the outsides were fairly ordinary. The main purpose for their simplicity was to avoid attracting marauders. Apparently, there were lots of those back then and they were less likely to maraud3 a palace if it had no external indication of treasures inside.
Marauders aside, this makes me think how people can be like Alhambran palaces. Some people’s best energies seem to go toward external indicators of success—their figurative “castle” is fancy and showy from a mile away. But there doesn’t seem to be much happening inside. They seem unhappy. In contrast, you meet others who on the surface appear very ordinary, but they are endlessly interesting to talk with, they have happy countenances, they do good wherever they go, they have absolutely beautiful insides. They may be physically attractive, “successful,” and well-dressed—but what you remember and like so much about them all comes from within—deep character, consistent kindness, discipline, a beautiful mind.
No pithy ending to this one, just an invitation to include this analogy in your year-end reflections. How’s the Palace of You? And where are your best energies going: the outside, or a beautiful inside? Please share your thoughts—or must-see travel recommendations, however simple or grand—in comments.
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In case you’re into getting more historical information than Yours Truly is going to provide, check out: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Alhambra-fortress-Granada-Spain
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/07/alhambra-granada-wall-inscriptions
Curious to know if “maraud” was an actual word, I looked it up—it is. It’s going to be tough to not overuse this treasure of a word.