I’ve been reflecting on my trip to Italy (and anxiously anticipating my next one) and there’s an Italian concept that I only recently came upon—dolce far niente, which translates to "the joy of doing nothing."
It's a concept that I think most people—at the least the western hemisphere—have yet to fully grasp. For us, doing nothing means vegging out in front of the TV all weekend as we dread Sunday's end and Monday's beginning. But the Italians may be on to something, and their commitment to "nothingness" is much more enriching than the words convey—an antithesis to how we perceive productivity.
Italians have living a life of pleasure down to a science. If living life was a sport, Italians would be Olympic medalists. There's a sense of richness, passion and 100% devotion in everything they do. When I visited, this was evident in every aspect of their life: the way they consumed food, how they interacted—I was envious to be honest of their consummate way of enjoying life.
There’s a lot we can learn from the Italians and I want to explore a bit on how we can incorporate the joy of doing nothing in our daily life (and of course how I've been trying to include it in mine). So I'll ask the question, what would your life look like if doing nothing became a daily meditative practice?
Of course, this post would not be complete without a personal anecdote.
I’ve recently been trying to be more intentional about my life which resulted in me painstakingly curating my morning and evening routines, the habits I want to have and the activities I want to do. Every hour was jam-packed with an item. But like every extreme course that I've undertaken in the past, this would prove to just be a knee-jerk reaction to an existential question.
What am I supposed to be doing with my life?
To answer that question, I had been filling my days with nice to-dos and lists, all inspired by posts and books that guaranteed that this is what successful people did. What were these successful people even successful of achieving? Beats me. Cue to trying to wake at 6am when I have no reason to be awake at that hour anyways. I found myself mindlessly completing tasks and ticking things off a to-do-list that weren’t even my own.
I speak of finding the joy in the mundane quite often but I was failing miserably. Instead, I was filling my days with things that meant nothing and finding new distractions under the guide of being productive. Having failed miserably, I found that I had become, well, miserable.
Then, as usual (because I am so easily influenced) I went to the other extreme, I wanted to do nothing. I read somewhere (or possibly saw it on a TikTok carousel) that we should sit with our boredom. So I tried that, and it was mind-blowingly boring—go figure. I started to think that something was wrong with me. Why couldn't I find satisfaction in either scenarios?
I presented the crisis at hand to my therapist who, in turn, presented her usual insightful perspective. She asked one single question:
Are you finding any of these things fulfilling?
It was a simple question with a simple answer; no, I was not. Neither the day that started at 6am and ended at 10:15pm, nor the day nary of structure brought me any joy. Because it wasn’t coming from a place of real desire, so it did nothing for me on a soul level.
Which brings me back to dolce far niente. It might refer to the sweet joy of doing nothing but nothing in this sense doesn’t mean staring in space with only your thoughts. The Italian culture, once again, is one of pleasure and passion. Dolce far niente inspires us to be more present. It's call us to immerse ourself in the pleasures of life, the frivolity, and sometimes the mundane joy as we appreciate every aspect of life. It's the basis of another Italian concept:
Dolce vita...
...which simply means the sweet life—a life of indulgence. Both concepts are opposite sides of the same coin that encourages us to have a fiery and intoxicating desire for life.
For me, that looked like removing the things that were distracting me from finding joy or providing a quasi-sense of pleasure. So now I'm on a whole new journey of incorporating untethered pleasure in my life. Right now that looks like losing myself in cooking a meal, watching a movie without my phone as a side kick, dancing in my apartment, drinking champagne in the dark and talking on the phone for 2-hours with my friends.
I discovered that dolce far niente isn't about being lazy or unproductive; it's about being intentional about how we spend our time. Instead of filling my days with unfulfilling tasks, I'm beginning to prioritize activities that bring me joy and fulfillment. And I'll continue to try and take in every moment in its entirety and devoting myself to being present.
If you're feeling stuck in a cycle of unfulfilling tasks and activities, I encourage you to try embracing the concept of dolce far niente. Start by prioritizing activities that bring you pleasure, even if they don't seem productive or necessary.
In doing so, I hope you find the sweetness of doing nothing and find pleasure in your daily life. So much so that that the the joy of immersing yourself in all life has to offer, of being so present in every action, becomes a form of meditation or reverence to the fact that you’re alive. See everyday as a celebration of life, give yourself the permission to immerse yourself in every day joy. As long as it comes from a place of fulfillment and not mere obligation, you get a pass from me.
Tangent: I absolutely can't wait to visit Italy again and I often think about the half-eaten tiramisu I had to leave because I was too full from the fresh pizza I made right before.
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