I went to the movies this weekend. I hardly ever do that. It feels a little too luxurious to me, like I am wasting time.
I kind of have a problem with that. I wake up in the morning and I try to lie in bed and pet my cat and meet the morning, but in my head the giant list is already talking to me. It knows I have just an hour to:
Start the coffee
Make the kid a hot breakfast
Water the plants
Feed the cat
Pack a lunch
Make my bed
Get ready for work
Drop the kid at school
Even on a morning when I have the day off I am up-and-at-em:
Cleaning the workshop
Shopping for groceries
Doing the laundry
Paying the bills
Writing the blog
Sometimes when I am emptying the trash at the flower shop where I work, I see a couple across the street about my age sitting and talking in their chairs on the front porch. I wonder why they get to do that while I am working. When I get home, I see two women I know walking together through my neighborhood while I am pulling weeds by my mailbox. I am puzzled: Why aren't they pulling weeds at their houses?
But finally I have figured it out: They are resting because they choose to. They have given themselves permission to do something I haven't. And that is what my friend Jimmy calls Playing at Life.
In the movie I saw called Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts goes to Italy to recover from a divorce. She meets a lot of Italians who eat too much pasta and sit around with their friends talking with their hands. She is accosted by an older Italian man who says that Americans work too much and can't appreciate il dolce far niente, which is Italian for The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.
I think he is right.
I worked really hard all of my life to get to an end that I won't get to have anyway. Looking back it seems like I probably should have let the weeds go and taken a few more moments to Play at Life.
It is late, but it is not too late for that.
Yesterday I watched Jeopardy while eating ice cream and walked a community garden just to look at the flowers.
Il dolce far niente I say with my hand in the air.
Isn't that the couple from the Cialis commercial?
ReplyDeleteElegantly spoken. I can relate so.
ReplyDeleteYES!! That stuff (things to do) will always be there...yes, I know it talks to us - even nags us at times. Yet if we nudge ourselves to carve out room for fun with the same energy that we tackle the blasted to do list - voila! We've made room for fun and joy too...cool, eh??
ReplyDeleteGerard has taught me so much about the sanctity of the weekend and my friend Hellie has taught me to "put my feet up" every day. However, the morning rush is NOT the time to be doing these things! Your writing is so inspiring and insightful. Please keep at it, but not so much that it goes on your "to do" list!
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ReplyDeleteSeriously (yes, it's possible, if unlikely), the 7 months I was fully retired, after a couple of months I really did appreciate not having to gear up on Sunday night for the coming week, and being able to determine which day I did something by the day when there was the least traffic, not the day I was off.
ReplyDeleteI really like your running (hopefully) posts on the sidebar about your "il dolce far niente" moments.
And now I know where the Far Niente winery in Napa got it's name.
a plants and rants blog post!!! what a nice surprise tonight!
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