Embracing Uncertainty

Life is full of uncertainty.  The quality of one's life is directly proportionate to the amount of uncertainty one can live with. And yet, for me, uncertainty acts to bring up all the usual fears. Fear of the unknown causes me to waste valuable energy and over time puts a negative spin on my perceptions and life.  I know many people who correctly embrace uncertainty with excitement and take it on as a challenge.  My natural tendency is to focus on what I lack -- that special man, hair that cooperates the way I believe it should, a perfectly sculpted body (according to my ideal); blah, blah, blah -- instead of all that I do have right now.  I strive to change my perceptions to positive from negative.  I'm just saying...

My fears of all the uncertainties keep me stuck.  I might live a more secure, safer life, but how about its quality and richness?

I had planned my move to Italy for 4 or 5 years.  I did all the legwork -- tons of research, extra jobs to reduce debt, hours and hours of dreaming what my life would be like in Italy.  After a few years I had done the research and was debt-free, but I had excuses as to why that moment was not the right time to make the move.  Then one day after a series of incidents, I had a moment of clarity.  I would turn 50 the following year, and I got scared.  But this time I was scared into action.  I did not want to get to the end of my life and wonder what if.  What if I had moved to Italy?  What would it have been like?  How would my life have been different?  What if I went to Italy and changed my mind? What if I decided I prefer Italy as a vacation destination instead of a place to call home? What if I allowed my fears to keep me stuck in a place I didn't want to be? What if I lacked the courage to make the move?

In that moment of clarity, I realized that I did not want to be on my deathbed and look back with regret for not having followed my heart, my dream to live in Italy. Wherever you go, there you are.  So here I am two and a half years later.  Each new day brings with it new experiences. I still marvel over the beauty that surrounds me:  the art, the food, the culture, the people, the pazza ("crazy" -- I am being polite using the word for crazy) language.  Yet life in Florence, Italy, is far from perfect. Some of my experiences are not how I imagined they would be. There are many life lessons still to be learned. My work in Italy is not yet finished; therefore, I intend to stay.

Letting go of some control, I packed my bags and moved to Italy.  I had so many questions unanswered.  (Not the way I used to do anything.  I had to have everything figured out first.) I moved here with faith that, in time, everything would fall into place, doors would open, I would survive.  That faith in my future redeemed my decision many times over.  Of course, money remains scarce.  I wonder whether I will have the means to survive this month, or next month, but somehow I do. And then I go through that fear all over again the following month.  (Hmm, I wonder when I will  learn that lesson.)

My progress and growth are slow.  Sometimes so slow that I do not recognize my forward movement, that things do come together, doors do open, life here does work out.

I began to teach yoga classes two months ago.  Yoga is important to me and has been an integral part of my life for several years.  The teaching, though,  is new to me, and I am aware I have much to learn.  But this opportunity to share something about which I am passionate excites me. Even more than that is the precious gift of students who like my teaching style ... and return for the next class. Together we laugh, we sweat, we stretch, we build strength, we do partner poses, we open our hearts, we Om, we unite.  Two Sanskrit words come to mind when I reflect on the hour or so I teach: sangha ("community") and samadhi ("complete absorption, bliss"). I get lost in my teaching.  By "lost" I mean I get in a zone where my head shuts off, mostly, and I teach from my heart. I realize later when I reflect back that I have lost sense of time, I am completely absorbed and enraptured in something I love. During that brief hour or so, my world is perfect.  I have no problems.  I am completely full, fulfilled.  I am love.  I realize that what I experience is a state of WHOLENESS, a form of meditation, bliss.  Fully charged, not lacking a thing.

What surprises me is that had I not embraced the uncertainty and my fears -- leave the USA, come to Italy, settle in Florence, and reach out to everyone, friends and strangers alike -- this opportunity to find myself, to be happy never would be mine. So perhaps peace and serenity can be found in not controlling every last detail, instead letting go and embracing uncertainty.

Roots

Two years ago today Mabel and I said goodbye to L.A. and hello to Florence, Italy, when we boarded the plane for our flight to our new home.

Leaving Los Angeles, one last ride in our car

I worried about her traveling for so long in the cargo hold below me: the noise, darkness, items shifting about.  After all, my brother's dog, Sparky, made a similar flight from L.A. to Brugge, Belgium, a few years earlier.  He went deaf from the flight but enjoyed the best year of his life living in Europe.  A dog's life is pretty good here because people in Europe welcome dogs to go almost everywhere.  No need to leave them behind anywhere.


Mabel is a real trooper.  She acclimated immediately to her new environs.  Never will I forget the picture I keep in my head when two airport employees hand-delivered Mabel to me, still in her crate, at the Florence airport.  She was pert and alert.  In the taxi ride to our new digs, Mabel rooted her tushy to the seat of the car between the taxi driver and me as she extended herself as tall as possible to look over the dashboard and out the window at all she would soon get to explore. She quickly spotted sights and smells centuries old that she filed away for future exploration.  

Jetlagged, Mabel naps with her baby after arriving to Italy

Mabel is a lucky girl.  Everyone does their part to spoil her, and she is adored by all.


It can be an exciting and scary adventure to uproot yourself from everyone you know and everything that is familiar and comfortable and transplant yourself to a different country with a foreign language. To move to and live in a city that welcomes thousands of tourists every day makes getting close to the locals even more of a challenge because the locals measure their roots by generations, not days. Why invest in a friendship with people who come but do not stay?


Not every day is la dolce vita (the sweet life/the good life), of course, but the obstacles and challenges are, for me, worth the deeply felt gratitude, joy, and happiness I now experience. Sure, I continue to find my way here.  Slowly and con calma, everything begins to fall into place.  The life of the expat has its own process and rigors to endure -- many days present new and different challenges -- but its objective remains true to our passion: to arrive safely on the other side of the wide chasm that separates our past lives from the future we envision and strive to create.

Radici (Roots)

My roots grow deeper as I make Florence, Italy, my home.

Leaving Italy

Which verb tense do you use when you are suspended in time?  I think in "Leaving Italy" time, but that was 3 1/2 days ago.  On the plane I caught a cold, which leaves me listless and fuori la testa (outside the head).  It feels as though time stands still, but I know better.  Time does not wait for me to catch up.  So even now, I am in the past tense, or so it seems.

Boarding the flight

Here I am back in Los Angeles, an unexpected, unplanned, but necessary trip.

The wonderful 101 Freeway

I try to come to terms with who I am today.  In my adult life I have been a responsible, productive, type-A personality, a small business owner who works hard.  I had control and strove to make a name for myself in my career, which I accomplished successfully.

Nearly two and a half years ago, I had an injury to my back that changed my life.  No longer was I able to work the way I used to. In addition to my injury, there was the economic crisis.  My career changed drastically as a result of the two.  It was then that I decided the time was right to make real my dream to live in Italy.  With my personality type, comes the gotta-have-it-all-figured-out-in-advance mentality.  I went against my usual grain in late '09 when I packed up and relocated to Italy.  I didn't have all the answers.  What I did have was an unwavering faith that, come what may, I would be okay, everything would work itself out, and with a little time, improved Italian language skills, and more contacts, doors would open wide and opportunities would present themselves.  I still have the faith, though, quite honestly, not always unwavering.

Being an expat has its own set of challenges to overcome.  It is no easy path.  In fact, only a small percentage of people who relocate make it beyond the first year.  Studies indicate that something like 5% of the expat population last five years in their new home land and actually assimilate, which means they learn to speak the native language and live like a local instead of in the safe confines of an expat community.

I have made it beyond the first year, and it is important now to assimilate and speak the language and live like a local, if I want to stay beyond the typical five years or fewer.  I try to assimilate and plan to last far more than five years, but...

We often hear of la dolce vita (the sweet life).  La dolce vita, though, is a bit of a myth.  It is not to say that some don't experience it, but for the most part, it is not a reality for the average Italian nor the average expat.  In fact, la dolce vita is more typically for the well-to-do pensioners who can afford extended vacations.  Especially in today's economic climate, when the dollar is $1.42 to the euro, it is a struggle for most expats, especially American expats, to make ends meet. 

I find that I, a once driven, type-A gal, now lack motivation.  I care less about the things that used to matter. Now I struggle with questions such as:  Did I do the right thing?  Have I thrown away my life and the things I worked so hard to achieve?  Will I ever be able to overcome the obstacles and challenges I face in Italy?  Do I dig my own grave just so I can live in Italy? Am I truly an expat, or am I becoming a nomad? (That is, no fixed home, caught in a purgatory of not completely assimilating in Italy and keeping a grubstake in the U.S.)?

During this unplanned visit in Los Angeles, one task is to close up my existing office.  I had previously downsized and effectively closed shop. But I left a physical presence "just in case."  I get emotional comfort in having my desk set up that has my personality all over it.  My desk is glass, which I turned into a vision board. It is one thing to pack up boxes of books and file folders.  But what do I do with the mementos that surround my desk?  They say much about who I am and what I worked for. How do I box up or file away those miscellaneous pieces of paper and trinkets?  I have an Italian phrase sandwiched between the two pieces of glass of my desk that says, "Mi piacerebbe lavorare e vivere a Firenze," (I would like to work and live in Florence). Now done; check. But can I stay?

Also, while in Los Angeles, I will finally free myself of my car and some other personal belongings.  This is all rather scary to me.  The more belongings I slough off in America, the less I straddle the two countries and the more permanent I make myself in Italy.  That spells F-E-A-R in capital letters. Yes, I do want this. But it is not that simple.  (I cannot be entirely forthcoming on this public blog.)  So the questions keep coming at me like tsunami waves.

The car gets towed for maintenance

I struggle with living in the moment, enjoying what I have today, for fear of what could happen tomorrow, next week, next year.  I know it is against the principles we are taught, but I also believe it would be irresponsible of me not to give thought to those very real issues that could happen to any of us, but especially to me, as I straddle two homes, two cultures.  It is not that I want to manifest these negative situations into happening, but I also know it would be denial on my part to ignore their possible reality.  Heavy thoughts weigh on my mind.  The questions I ask myself cause discomfort. I am determined to live a simpler and more basic life in Italy. Some days I do.

I love the home I have made, and make, for myself in Italy.  I strive to create my own form of la dolce vita, and I succeed (to a greater or lesser extent).  I will not give this up, no matter the difficulties that face me or my own thoughts that sometimes punish me. These past few days in Los Angeles tell me that Florence is my home, my destiny.  That said, I also recognize that, when I return to Florence, I must spend more time indoors working. But when I choose to go outside, life awaits.  I live in a place full of history, and I do not take it for granted.  I try to be mindful of the beauty that surrounds me and to notice something new each day and definitely not to allow it to become ordinary.

An extraordinary life in an extraordinary home.  That is the theme of this blog and also my mission in life ... one step at a time.

--Josslyn, Los Angeles, California, USA

Abbicci and the Art of the Italian Language

Abbicci is how we pronounce ABC in Italian.  It means ABC, alphabet, primer, rudiments, and basics.  I love that abbicci is a word instead of merely ABC.  The English equivalent is abecedary, though, I must admit, I have never heard it.

Many of my friends in the States often comment to me that I must now be speaking fluently and like a local.  Magari! (I wish) Anzi! (on the contrary).

Since a child and growing up in Los Angeles where Hispanics make up approximately 47% of the population, I spoke Spanish.

My first visit to Italy in 2003 inspired my desire to learn Italian. I thought it would not be too difficult since it is similar to Spanish.  Wrong!  Spanish is a piece of cake.  Italian is -- I don't know what to compare a piece of cake to. A piece of marble?  It requires chipping away at the stone for a long time to speak the language at all well.

Twice I received a month-long scholarship to study the language here in Florence, Italy.  Once I began studying Italian, my brain told me, "You must decide. Will it be Italian or Spanish?"  The two languages are similar yet still so different.  Spanish is spoken in more than 20 countries around the world; Italian, primarily in two countries, i.e., Italy and the Ticino region of Switzerland. It would have been more practical to choose Spanish, but I found the Italian language beautiful, melodic, enchanting, and seductive.  And I knew I would continue to return to Italy.  I chose Italian.  Now when I speak the word "gracias," it doesn't sound correct to my ears.

I am in Italy since about a year ago, and I would hope my Italian were near perfect by now.  I believe that practice does not make for perfection, rather practice makes permanent.  If you play tennis with a bad backhand and continue to play with that bad backhand, it's never going to correct itself.  It becomes a permanent bad backhand.  Old habits are difficult to break.  Yes, I can speak all day in Italian, but I make errors in every other sentence.  I imagine I sound like I just crossed the border into this country.  I can survive and get along quite well with my level of Italian.  But I want more.  I want to be able to speak and understand better than I do.

Speaking on the streets and in my day-to-day life, the conversations rarely get deep enough to stretch my language skills, and because most Italians appreciate our attempts to speak their language in their country, they rarely correct us.  And, frankly, there is too much English spoken in this town with so many tourists and English-speaking expats. Therefore, I keep reinforcing that bad backhand.

By summer I was becoming frustrated that my Italian was actually getting worse, not even staying at the same level.  I had forgotten the rules and the exceptions and was questioning myself when I spoke. Summer of 2006 is when I last studied, and my language was at its peak then.  Speaking well, not perfectly, is high up on my list of priorities since I chose Italy to be my home.

At the end of summer, I decided to take private Italian lessons with one of my favorite professors from 2006.  It's been a few months now since my professor and I started to review the grammar from the beginning.  Days come when I arrive to my professor's office for my lesson and tell him, "I used to love this language, but now I hate it."  The only easy part learning Italian is the pronunciation: What you see is exactly how you say it.  Italian has a ridiculous amount of rules, and for every rule there are about 20 exceptions.  And the verbs... 21 tenses and moods.  In English there are several, but we use only about a handful of them and not much changes in the conjugations.

Just this week we are studying the subjunctive tense (congiuntivo).  There are four moods: present, past, imperfect, and past imperfect.  It is a challenge to learn all the ways to use the subjunctive.  I am determined to grasp the proper usage.  At this stage in my review of the language, subjunctive, is when the language becomes rich and colorful, where it advances from abbicci to pure romance.  We no longer speak only in the indicative, facts:  See Dick. See Spot.  See Spot chase the squirrel.  See Dick chase Spot.  I need to express myself clearly.  My favorite topics of discussion are often subjective topics, which makes the subjunctive mood a necessity.  I am on the edge of properly expressing my hopes, dreams, wants, desires, opinions, doubts, suppositions, uncertainties, fears, experiences, expectations and more and having give-and-take dialogue clearly with others in a foreign language in a foreign country.  And it finally is sticking to my brain. My backhand is improving.  It is exciting to be able to express myself and understand what others say to me in Italian, to have much deeper, more meaningful conversations, and take the relationships to an all-new level. This is the very meaning of to be rich. The wealth of words and language to me is wealth in our hearts.  And with this kind of wealth, many doors open wide.  Abbicci spells opportunity.  Just in time for the new year.

My New Year's resolution?  Expression, self-expression, and a wealthy heart and mind.  My pursuit of the Italian language helps me achieve that resolution.

L'inglese

I am a scaredy cat.  I fear many things.  I hear "fear" come up in my vocabulary more frequently than I would like to admit.  Just as the word starts to ooze out of my lips, I want to retract it, but it's too late.

Every day here is filled with at least one kind of adventure.  Today I was expressing to an Italian friend a fear I had about something that I was about to do, and as we parted so I could go tackle my fear, he yelled out to me "Don't be afraid."

I have been teaching a few people conversational English.  It's easy, and it's fun.  I still think I learn more than my students.  Having been hired by an Italian teacher to teach her first-year-university-student nephew an hour of conversation and an hour of grammar each week, I prepared in advance and trekked across town to where we were to meet.  In the beginning, he just nodded his head and muttered words in Italian.  I thought to myself that we are going to start from the very beginning.  I was fearful because, in all honesty, I felt like I was bluffing my way through.  I use English in my profession and as a result have a pretty good knowledge of my mother tongue, but I don't have formal teaching experience.  I remembered to breathe and to lengthen my exhale, and it went well.

When I arrived home, I received a phone call from the aunt.  I was afraid -- See?  There's that word again! -- of hearing something along the lines of "You're fired."  But instead she told me her nephew was "really, really happy" and excitedly told her more than once, "I spoke English!"

In spite of my many, many, many, many fears, somehow I manage to usually feel the fear and go forth regardless.  One reason I do that is I am afraid of the experiences I would miss out on otherwise.

Longer exhale.......................

-- Josslyn "Giosalina"
Florence, Italy