I find old ruins fascinating. The real treasure is discovering an abandoned home, off the beaten track, weathered and worn and open to the elements. I wonder who lived there and what they did? I wonder how it came to be abandoned? There were once people in such places, living lives and making memories, and all that remains is rubble and broken space.

A fascination with ruins isn’t uncommon. Walking through the rubble and detritus of buildings that were once important to someone is a way of connecting to the past and also reminding ourselves that time moves forward relentlessly. All things begin and end. And we must find joy in the experience of living whilst we can, if we can. Not all lives are equal, it’s worth remembering.

Ruins remind us that everything changes, whatever we do. Next to the behemoth of time, we’re vastly small. In some way this is a comforting thought, as even wars and bad governments will fall to the ravages of time in a way that no person, however rich and powerful, can avert. No doubt, this is a terrifying thought to people who can’t bear the reality that their power and influence will fade, and their lives will be forgotten completely.

Ozymandias, one of my favourite Shelley poems, provides insight into the eventual ruination of once-powerful empires:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”