Lessons From a 5,000-Year-Old Civilization
Every so often, life offers an invitation you didn’t expect.
A doorway you didn’t plan for, but somehow were meant to walk through. Egypt was that for me.
I said yes at the last minute, with no time to prepare and no real understanding of what I was stepping into. And yet – from the moment I arrived – it felt like life had placed me exactly where I needed to be.
People kept asking, “What was the highlight?”
And the truth is… I couldn’t choose just one.
The temples and tombs left an imprint on me I will never forget. Standing inside structures that have lived, breathed, and endured nearly 5,000 years of reverence, weather, war, and worship reshapes your sense of time, effort, and devotion – and what’s truly possible to create.
For a civilization so focused on eternal life, they built with an intention and precision that has outlasted empires, religions, dynasties… and nearly anything we create today.
And yet – what surprised me was this:
the moments that touched me most didn’t live only in the grandeur,
but in the quiet that followed.
Up on the river boat at dusk, everything opened.
The world softened.
The sky shifted into gold.
Villages drifted by in silence.
Temples emerged like silhouettes from another lifetime.
And in that slow, quiet drift along the Nile, I found myself reflecting on how we move through our own lives.
Egypt has lived so many lives:
Ancient Egyptian.
Egypto-Greco.
Christian.
Muslim.
Modern.
Evolving.
Becoming.
Layer upon layer upon layer.
And so do we.
Not all at once – but over time.
Sometimes in dramatic transitions, sometimes in quiet, almost imperceptible shifts.
We often hold tightly to who we were – to stories, identities, expectations – as though things are meant to stay fixed.
We forget that our cells are constantly changing, our perspectives reshaping, our lived experiences carving new understandings into us every single day.
Egypt reminded me of this:
We are always in the process of becoming.
Some parts of us endure.
Some parts evolve.
Some parts fall away to make room for the next layer.
All of it is part of the whole.
And just like the temples – built stone by stone, story by story – our own lives are shaped by what we choose to build with intention.
So as we move into the last stretch of the year, maybe let this be the question:
What in you is timeless and worth preserving?
What is ready to evolve, soften, or be reshaped?
And who are you becoming in this next chapter of your life and leadership?
Egypt reminded me that nothing is static–
not identity,
not culture,
not leadership,
not us.
And maybe that’s the greatest gift of all.
We are allowed to keep becoming.
As we approach the end of the year, it’s worth asking what this season is inviting us to release… and what it’s asking us to grow into. And how does that help us rise to meet the moments ahead?