🇮🇹 THE ITALIAN WAY 🇮🇹
After three weeks living on the Italian Riviera, I came home with a lot more than great memories, a few extra pounds, and an even deeper appreciation for pasta and red wine.
I’ve traveled to Italy many times. I have vacationed in Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples & The Amalfi Coast multiple times! But there is a big difference between visiting somewhere and actually living there for a while, even if its just a short period. For three weeks, Italy wasn’t a vacation destination. It was my home.
I noticed that Italians have a very different relationship with life than we do in America. I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out how to accomplish more. How to build bigger businesses. How to make better investments. How to optimize my health. How to become more productive. How to squeeze more value out of every day. And I’m proud of that. Ambition has given me an extraordinary life.
But Italy showed me that there is another skill that matters just as much:
Learning how to actually experience the life you worked so hard to create. That is something Italians seem to understand instinctively. For instance, they don’t treat meals as something to get through.
In America, lunch can be something you eat standing over the kitchen counter while answering emails. Dinner can be DoorDash in front of a television. Coffee is something we put in a giant paper cup and drink while driving somewhere else.
In Italy? Coffee is a moment. Lunch is a moment. Dinner is a main event.
And it isn’t necessarily about extravagance. Most of my favorite meals weren’t Michelin starred restaurants. They were simple.
Beautiful tomatoes. Fresh bread. Olive oil. Pasta made correctly. A bottle of local wine. Maybe some fish caught nearby. Waiters were not in a rush to turn the table. People actually cherish the time they have eating a meal together.
Also, I realized how often we Americans are physically in one place while mentally already racing toward the next one. Not so in Italy. Being present in the moment is far more common there.
Italy is obviously very beautiful. But what fascinated me is how much effort Italians put into preserving beauty in everyday life.
Flowers on a balcony. A beautiful plate. An old building that would probably have been torn down 50 years ago in America. Beauty isn’t treated like some unnecessary luxury.
It is woven into daily life.
Three weeks on the Italian Riviera taught me many things but whstbit taught me most is to how slow my roll, how to pay attention to my surroundings, and how to look for the beauty in things.
🇮🇹 La Dolce Vita.
