Dolce Niente

With a half hour left on my lunch break, my fruit and protein bar eaten, I decided I needed to go get a caffe latte at a nearby café.  I put my wallet in my pocket and walked extremely quickly to a café I know has to-go cups. My longing for home often makes me do idiot things, such as spend more money on a to-go cup, than a caffe mug in which I would just drink in stillness at the piazza.

After putting a to-go cup in my hand, I had the familiar feeling. The one that makes you feel busy, and important, and slightly stressed. I never realized before moving to Italy how powerful a to-go cup could be.

I walked back to work, after just about three minutes away. Now please do tell me, why did I spend more on a to-go cup, instead of relaxing and enjoying the piazza? This may seem rather trivial, and unimportant, but there is a significance to it. A lifestyle really. Did America breed me for to-go cups. How is it, I live in Italy, with some of the best coffee in the world, and yet, I long for a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks?

The answer: Dolce Niente. This means literally sweet nothing. The sweetness of nothing. The art of nothing. Italians has mastered this. Walk past a café in the morning, and you are bound to see many older men practicing dolce niente. They sit, they sip, they be. That's it. Now, as much as this is romanticized in chick flicks, the European or Italian sweet nothingness, (the finer life, the sweet life,) have you every tried to sit and do nothing. Actually try it.

I have found this impossible. At a café I usually find myself chapters deep in a classic piece of literature. Or writing for my next blog. Planning lessons. Playing on my smart phone. Do you know how difficult it is to sit, to sip, to be.

I find most of the time, if I do nothing, I regret it. I should have done something. I often speak down to myself for sleeping in, not running, not doing my morning yoga. How could I sit and people watch when there are so many magnificent books to be read. And at home. Well there's books, there's movies, there's cleaning. Dolce Niente to an American...unheard of!

I find myself now, late this evening, wanting to be more Italian. What if I could do nothing, and not regret it. What would that feel like. (Even as I write this, I think of the 50 crunches awaiting me.)

Although my main goal to gain from Italy is the Italian, maybe I could also gain nothing. That is, doing nothing. Doing nothing and feeling 'ok' about it. There really is no reason to fill every second of my day. It only makes time fly in the most miserable way. Shall I try to recover from my American engrained timetable? I shall start. I shall start by not getting anymore to-go cups.