by Brielle Diskin
This is the fourth and final article in a four-part series entitled “Postcards From the Edge,” as part of our April/May Online Issue.
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La dolce vita = The Sweet Life.
I began this series perched in the window of an Italian cafe contemplating the adventure ahead and recovering from my messy arrival. Now, with just eight hours left, I am sitting alone at my journey’s end in the Rome Airport and I have no more expectations, only reflections.
When everyone hears you’re studying abroad in Italy, they imagine your life to be a picturesque Tuscan landscape where there is a shortage of problems and an abundance of wine. I imagined the same thing before I left. Reality turned out to be quite different.
While studying abroad, I was classified as a sojourner—a person who resides in a temporary place. However temporary a place it was, it was far from Utopia. Leaving the country doesn’t mean escaping your life, and it took me all of the 4,163 miles between here and home to figure that out.
Aside from the language barriers, new roommates and a new school, the hardest part was adjusting and finding peace in this new place.
In the beginning, I had a hard time enjoying what was in front of me. Imagine sitting in front of the sun setting over an island in Greece and feeling absolutely nothing. I became obsessed with comparing myself to everyone else’s experiences and in turn, I was missing out on the present moment.
Studying abroad came at a time when I was my lowest. I had just barely gotten through a rough year and had begun to struggle to recognize myself. I had lost the appetite for my life and four months in Italy was like the six-course savory dinner I needed to get it back.
As you might have learned by watching or reading the canonical Eat Pray Love, there is a saying in Rome that goes, “dolce far niente,” which means the sweetness of doing nothing. It encapsulates the pleasure of being idle and the essence of enjoying the present moment. I’ve never been one for the idle moments, but if there is one thing I have learned here it has been how to enjoy.
Embracing dolce far niente meant changing what I wanted from my life. I think most people would relate to me here when I say all I ever did was ask the universe to make me happy. Whether it was getting a new job, falling in love or finally traveling, I was attributing anything else to my own happiness except myself. In a search for happiness, hedonism often runs rampid and instead of looking in, we only look out. While alone in italy, however, I found happiness in myself instead of asking the world to give it to me.
True pleasure comes from within like seeds you grow in the garden, and it will continue to cultivate as you grow, too. Asking the universe to provide you with true pleasure, however, is like getting supermarket flowers that will wither and die by week’s end.
From what I observed, a true Italian takes what they want and doesn’t justify a reason for it, only that they wanted to. They don’t rush to where they’re going; they simply enjoy the walk there. When I began to live my life this way, everything changed.
There’s so much you miss when you’re not paying attention. So I stopped living numbly and started to take notice of everything that was around me. On walks, to class, I gave myself ample time to explore the city of Florence, walk into bakeries that effervesce into the street, poke my head in artist’s workshops and observe the classic Italian architecture. Something I learned here was that it is about the journey, not the destination.
I used to joke with people and say I was in a relationship with my food, but upon reflection, I don’t think it was ever anything to laugh at. It may sound stupid, but the food was a big part of enjoying my time here. There’s something magical about sitting down for an amazing meal with friends over some wine and random conversation. There is a magic in something that tastes so good that you’re completely silenced. Trying new foods unlocks a sense of adventure and a yearning for pleasure.
One of my roommates was famous for asking, “why not?” That’s how she responded to literally everything: “why not?” I loved this.
If you ask yourself “why not” every time you’re overthinking something, you will actually see how ridiculous we can be. I can’t tell you how many times I talk myself out of enriching experiences because of fear for the self-loathing that would keep me up at night. The tossing and turning over the spoonful of gelato was enough already. Asking “why not” is to live in true Italian fashion, and allowing yourself to enjoy is embracing dolce far niente.
Somewhere along this journey of joy, I found something else—myself. I was afraid at first that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy anything, and afraid for my shrinking capacity for joy. In reality, it wasn’t the sweetness of doing nothing that I acted out of but rather the sweetness of doing everything. If you find the sweetness in everything there will always be something to be happy about. That meant peace and something to be grateful for, and especially grateful to yourself for getting you here.
Sitting here now at the end, I am trying not to be sad it is over but instead glad that it happened. People always say good things come to an end but the more I thought I about it, the more I felt like that was bull. Why do all things have to come to an end? Seriously, why? Why do we have all these phrases in our rhetoric that make it seem like joy is temporary, pain is inevitable and happiness is fleeting?
Dealing with the spectacular now and choosing to fight instead of flight, I refuse to believe that this good thing for me has to end. If my troubles followed me to Italy, then, conversely, all the work I’ve done on myself had no choice but to come home with me too.
Now that it’s finally over, it feels like a Netflix show you binged too fast and, in retrospect, all the details seem to blur together. But, this time, there’s no going back to episode one and starting it all over. What we can do, instead, is be grateful for everything and value the lessons as much as we do our memories.