When I graduated college, I was determined to move to Italy. At the time I didn’t really articulate my reasons, but looking back, I can name a few. I had an overly romantic view of life, pride in my Italian heritage, and had become jaded by American consumerism. Like many young people, I was also struggling with the transition to full-time work life. The previous year, I had studied in Rome for four months, and the contrast between my Italian life and my American life was staggering for me.
I’m sure my family and friends tired of hearing about the schemes I had been contemplating: I applied to Grad School in Rome, sent inquiries to local companies in Italian cities, studied VISA laws, and asked my Italian friends about opportunities. I also created budgets to determine how long my savings would last me in different scenarios abroad. In short, I was willing to sacrifice many things (first and foremost financial security and a “career”) to simply live in Italy.
But I settled instead. There are countless blogs that will tell you that the time to travel is in your 20’s, and that if you wait and put it off, you will find that your youth and all chances of true adventure have passed you. I was always scared of being the person these writers warned you of becoming.
I did travel to Italy last year, but it wasn’t the epic multi-year escape I had dreamed, and it definitely wasn’t the zen experience all those blogs talked about. But it also wasn’t that conventional trip I had always abhorred - the typical 10 day, 7 city jaunt complete with guided tours, fannypacks, nice hotels and tourist traps that had pushed me to overcompensate with my own vision in the first place.
At the time, I had just accepted a job at a new company and asked for the latest start date possible, but I only managed to buy myself 3 weeks. Despite this let down, I decided to do the best with what I had. After a week of planning, I flew into Milan, spent 5 days in Lake Como, 3 days in Rome revisiting old haunts, and 1 week volunteering on a farm in Tuscany. I learned some things along the way.
1. Life is a Series of Opportunities
Consumed by ideas of an Italian adventure and certain that I wouldn’t be in the US for long, I stubbornly refused to consider any long-term commitments, avoiding them like the plague. The problem with this is that I never made any concrete plans to go abroad, just schemes. It’s like telling your Mom that you can’t have any of the homemade pasta that she made because you’re saving up for the tacos you wish you had.
This brings me to my realization: life is a series of opportunities, not choices. Barely in my twenties, and with no responsibilities to tie me down, I saw my life as an infinite set of choices. I imagined myself doing anything and everything, but I didn’t realize that only a few of those were true opportunities.
After making more out of those 3 weeks than I ever knew possible, I tried to look at things in a new light. Many people give you an earful about regret, but in my experience, most people talk about the opportunities that they didn’t recognize soon enough rather than the big risks that didn’t pay off. The only way to avoid this is to become an opportunist, and to realize there are unique advantages to almost every phase and journey of life.
Now, I try to treat opportunism like voting - it’s best practiced early and often.
When you think about the most successful people in history, there are definitely many stories of individuals that carried out their childhood dream by relentlessly driving towards it. But more often than not, you hear of those that were flexible, saw an opportunity, and ran with it.
2. Live Simply
The farm in Tuscany was the most memorable part of my trip. I volunteered at a small olive grove and vineyard owned by a German couple that had moved to Italy 30-some years ago, and proceeded to raise 3 boys on the property. I had wanted to WWOOF (worldwide organization of organic farmers, often used as a verb) for quite some time. After looking at hundreds of farms, these people were by far my first choice because they had a gorgeous farm and a love for classic books and music.
Although volunteering in Tuscany can seem very romantic, the work I did was not. Most of the work in olives happens during harvest in the fall but it was late spring when I arrived. Instead, the big task was cutting the grass between the trees. Since the terrain is very hilly and the grass hadn’t been cut since the fall, I spent hours bulldozing chest-high grass with a weedwacker - oddly satisfying. I also helped them build an addition to their farmhouse by mixing cement in a wheelbarrow with a shovel.
I probably only worked 20 hours the entire week! This is because their approach to work was very simple. 2 of the days it was raining, and they said “It’s raining, so we don’t work today”. One of the days was a national holiday, and so we had a barbeque instead. I don’t mean to say they were lazy. Quite the opposite. Even when they weren’t working, they were still around the farm tinkering with something. In many ways, they just had a different view of work and leisure. It reminded me of something my Grandma always says - all in moderation.
Every night, we had the pleasure of eating dinner outside. This included a homecooked meal, lots of conversation, and a little wine from the vineyard. Breakfast consisted of assorted breads, fruit and coffee. One day, we had whole cooked artichokes as a snack. I had never done this before, but it was so wonderfully simple - you just start by eating the softer parts of the leaves and find more and more edible parts until you get to the heart.
They had a TV, but it was a small 1990’s box that was placed on their piano bench when they wanted to watch something. TV bingeing was replaced by other forms of entertainment. There were many instruments in the house (their 3 sons are all musical, playing piano, cello and violin in that order, and the youngest is a world renowned virtuoso), and almost every wall was covered with books in 4 different languages. The fact that their boys turned out to be extremely bright is no accident. It’s amazing what people can accomplish when they aren’t saturated with distractions.
This was the real takeaway for me. I had too many distractions at home. I have since worked diligently on trying to reduce these and focus on the important things, but it’s a challenge. At some point, there is so much going on in our lives that we can’t really savor one thing. It’s amazing how enjoyable a simple conversation or a book can be when you stop worrying about the other 1000 things you’re trying to do.
3. The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side
There are two reasons why I resisted this realization for a long time: (1) I hate cliches and (2) “the grass is always greener” has always seemed like a cynical phrase. Back when I first graduated from college, it felt like a saying people used to demean my motivations for going to Italy and reduce them to a child’s fantasy. I took offense to this perceived slight, which probably led to the very impression I feared.
But I was truly taken aback when one of my Italian friends told me they wished they had Starbucks in Italy. I could have screamed. To me, Italy was the escape from America’s over-branded consumerism. A place where coffee emphasized tradition, quality, service and good taste rather than branding, marketing, and competition. Starbucks is literally a poor imitation of Italian coffee culture. The CEO and founder made a trip to Milan, and was so impressed by its cafes that he decided to try to recreate them in America… and failed.
However, I saw that same disbelief in my Italian friends, when I told them of my dream of living in Italy. I had just received a job from one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. by simply attaching my resume to a website and chatting with a few people in a cafe for an hour; a job that would guarantee me enough means to live on my own (it is very common for Italians to live with their parents through their 20’s), and that would also offer me optimistic prospects for future wealth. Meanwhile, Italy has a 40% unemployment rate among young people, and most students there simply shrug when asked about their opportunities after college. To them, (much like the Starbucks example) America represents everything that Italy is not: efficient, dynamic, relevant, and wealthy.
4. Sometimes, Things Just Go Your Way
I’ve never considered myself a very lucky person. Most people just don’t feel that way. But with only a week to plan my trip, I had to leave a lot up to chance. I was still buying hotels and train tickets on my iphone (trying to gather what WIFI service I could) while travelling.
If I had bought my flight a couple weeks earlier, it would probably have cost $400 more. If it hadn’t happened to be a National Holiday during one of the 3 (week)days I was in Rome, I would not have been able to see some old friends. If my trip had been just one week earlier, I would have missed my chance to stay at the farm in Tuscany. If my cousin had not told me that a family friend was in Milan, I would have missed out on some pretty incredible times. Even just a week before I left, I found out that some of my college friends from Maryland were going to be in Rome at the same time, and we ended up sharing an apartment! What I initially feared to be a solitary trip ended up being one full of good company.
While not a very superstitious person, I can’t ignore that these things just seemed to work out. I didn’t have perfect weather every day, and I did catch a cold. Other than that, I had as perfect of a trip as you could imagine.
For this reason, I can add one last lesson learned from my trip:
5. Be Grateful
