Crossing the Rubicon

When I saw the 1 hr training course “Crossing the Rubicon” in training calendar, I unconsciously subscribed to that because of curiosity in knowing about “Rubicon”.

This idiom “Crossing the Rubicon” is linked with Caesar’s true incident. In 49BC, Rubicon is a river in northern Italy and it is one of the boundaries of Rome empire. To prevent internal coup, Rome’s law stated that any internal army crossing the Rubican would be killed ruthlessly by wage of war. Caesar, a successful Roman general planned to attack Rome with large battalion of army via Rubicon. Once they are about to cross the river, Caesar had second thought on the bank of the river to cross or not. He was thinking and thinking for a long time, 6 months passed, he still was not able to make the decision and all his army were lying idle on bank of Rubicon.

“What kind of behavior did Caesar exhibited on the bank of rubicon?” trainer asked the audience. It is Procrastination. But why? It is due to Fear of Failure. We can witness these kind of procrastination within everybody on day-today activities. Some of them like, to switch the career from Finance to software, Resign the existing job and start business, switch from technical role to management role, whether to go abroad or not etc. In these situations, most people tend to take more time to make the critical decision which will have significant impact in their lives. This idiom, “Crossing the Rubicon” denotes those situations.

Top psychologist says, most people never crosses the Rubicon (means doesn't take decision) in their real life after the prolonged procrastination and they repent for not crossing Rubicon (means droping their ambitions) decision in later part of their life. So he recommends to cross the Rubicon after thorough thought to reap the benefits.

Let’s come to Caesar again, whether he crossed or not? One of his minister advised him, “if you go back without crossing the Rubicon, it will haunt you till you go to grave and also damages your reputation of bravery. If you delay it further, our men will go sick”. Soon, Caesar decided to cross the Rubicon, and rest is history. He became the successful emperor of Rome.

Hereafter you come across this idiom "Crossing the Rubicon" or "...in the bank of Rubicon" in newspaper or TV news, you will certainly understand the context. For e.g. US on the bank of Rubicon on attacking N.Korea