Dolce Far Niente

After watching "Eat Pray Love", I learned this Italian phrase - dolce far niente, meaning "the sweetness of doing nothing". This phrase captures the spirit of Italians in enjoying the passion of life without too much care and this has beenpart of my life which I try to stike a balance.

I am a person who likes to work hard to make my life better. However, I am also the kind of person who cannot work too hard and loses my own direction. I still remember when I went job-hunting earlier this year, the senior managers always ask me what my career inspirations are and how I see my life in the future. I tend to lie a bit by trying to demonstrate how passionate I am towards work and how much I want work to be an important part of my fulfilling life.

What I actually think is that I love my job, but my job is just a small part of my life which provide me with satisfaction in various achievement and sufficient financial resources that let me go for different enjoyment of life, such as traveling and pursuing further studying in areas that are not related to work. I always want a balanced life no matter how difficult it is to maintain. Outside work, I always want to have time for myself and people I love. I need to be able to spend time with all these people and to think through what I have been doing in order to be able to feel the purpose of my life. I want to be a woman who has things that interest her and keeps her mind occupied, as well as being able to put a lot of her attention into her family that she builds with her husband. For me, work and career cannot last forever, but then relationship with people can. When you walk through the path of life, it is love for people that allows you to leave footprints.

I enjoy my "dolce far niente". I regard that as a time when I can think through different parts of life and feel what my heart is telling me to do. The voice of your heart is always so soft that any kind of disturbance can cover up that little voice and lead you to the way where your heart doesn't belong. "Dolce far niente" doesn't have to be a time when I just lie down and do nothing, instead it is the time when I do things simply because I want to do them, but not that I am obliged to do them. It is such sweet moments of life that makes me understand what I really want in life and what has been giving me most pleasure. My mind loosen up when I just let my conscious and structured mind slow down and let creative ideas to flood all over my mind, telling me how much more wonderful my life can be. THe time when you enjoy the pleasure of idleness, you start to notice and appreciate the world and how much people hae worked around you to make you the person you are now.

If you ask me the word that represents me, I woul say "amor", which means "love" in Italian. I hope everyone can take some time off every day or even just every week, to enjoy your "dolce far niente" in your own way. I am sure this will make you find your life more colorful.