If this were an Olympic event, Americans would never win a single medal, and Italians would take home the gold every single time. They did, after all, come up with the saying-—and practice it whenever possible. Americans, on the other hand, think that idleness is next to godlessness. Punishable by nasty looks from anyone observing you in this ignominious state of inactivity.

But what exactly does that Italian saying mean, and why are we Yanks so bad at it? Well, read on: you know you want an excuse to do nothing, and I am here to give it to you.

First of all, let’s clear up what il dolce far niente is NOT. Sitting in front of a TV, even for long enough to be christened Champion Couch Potato of the Century, is not doing nothing. You’re watching something, and god forfend, maybe even learning something.

Diddling on your phone while waiting for an Uber is also not doing nothing. You’re diddling.
Some people diddle better than others, but that’s a different story.

Luxuriating in a bubble bath is . . . well, you get the idea. You’re luxuriating,

So what exactly IS il dolce far niente? Well, people, it’s exactly what it says: Doing nothing! Staring into space. Gazing at your navel. Dropping out from the world. 

This is not to say Italians are lazy and don’t take care of business. You may have heard of people like Marconi and Michelangelo, or Ferrari and Maserati. Pavarotti undoubtedly had moments of il dolce far niente, but in between he had amazing moments of doing something spectacular. Notice that the fashion house “Dolce and Gabbana” is not “Dolce and Niente.” No slouch, any of these people. But the thing is that they were not ALWAYS busy, and, here’s the important part, so pay attention: they didn’t feel guilty if they were doing nothing. In fact, they found it sweet!

Psychology proves that the brain needs a rest from time to time, and I think that while you are doing “nothing” your brain is actually working on problems, behind your back, so to speak. But doing nothing is not as easy as it sounds, as anyone with a smart phone in their hot little hands will admit. I am no exception.

But by chance—and almost everything in life is chance no matter how we think we control it—I took a course at CUNY called “Trying Not to Try” about ancient Chinese philosophies. What in the wide, wide world, even coming from my connect-the-dots brain, does THAT have to do with the Italian saying we started with? Actually, a great deal. Think about the title itself, Trying Not to Try. Doesn’t that imply a kind of surrender? And isn’t that what il dolce far niente is?

I can’t tell you everything we learned in that 12-week course, conducted by an astute leader, but I can tell you this: the subtitle is Ancient China, Modern Science and the Power of Spontaneity.

But how do you achieve spontaneity? It obviously does not come from dwelling too much on a subject or overworking it, but neither does it come from doing nothing. You have to do the work, then let go. The Chinese philosophers we studied: Confucius, Lao-tse, Mencius, and others, all taught, in their own ways, how to achieve a more fulfilling life —as the hippies said centuries later— by “letting go and letting be.” (The Beatles were on to something about this too, as you may have noticed.)

The sages wrote about wu-wei (oo-way), an effortless way of being in the world— although it doesn’t work until after you’ve done the work. Think of an athlete practicing long and hard at their sport, then getting “in the zone” and playing without thinking, without strain. Of course, this wu-wei stuff is easier said than done. We Americans always seem to want to DO SOMETHING about a problem, about life itself.

But I, personally, being of Italian descent, think that my ancestors have developed a kind of pathway to wu-wei that even the ancient Chinese never came up with, which is, you may have guessed, il dolce far niente.

Okay, so it’s not an official philosophy, I am certainly no philosopher (official or otherwise), and I just made up the link to the  Chinese sages. You won’t find it on Wikipedia, or anywhere else, and yet I really do believe that there’s a there there. 

I call it “Wu-Wei with a Side of Pasta.” And that’s what I’m having.

Photo by Chinnapong at iStock by Getty Images