"The World's Smartest People!"

I've been trying to figure out why it seems that the Italians have such a great lifestyle and the rest of the world, to varying degrees, is out there killing themselves, running around like crazy people and failing to get the message.

After the last program I saw about Italy, and having spent some time there, I think I am prepared to offer my own opinions about why Italians seem healthier and live longer than Americans...

First of all, Italians don't try to be something they're not so they're comfortable in their own skins. Secondly, they get a lot of positive reinforcement from their families whom they see a lot more frequently than most of us do with our own families. In fact, in the families that were portrayed on a recent program on Discovery Time, all of the members they profiled managed to spend an awful lot of time with their families even to the extent of having lunch together despite it being the height of their busy season. (In one case, the entire family designed clothing or did something else in the process so that they were always together...).
In many Italian families that I saw, many were even all engaged in the same kind of business...which usually involved doing something from scratch. I mean if it was a shoe designer, he and his family worked together to take a piece of leather and turn it into a shoe....They treated the leather as if it were a piece of art and seemed to feel a kind of harmony with the materials they worked with. Moreover, they took genuine pride in completing something from scratch. if they were selling specialty ham, they would all get together to take care of the pigs so that they were happy, well fed and slaughtered within the same household. This is very interesting because in America no one person is usually involved in starting with something and seeing it through to the end. That is very satisfying in and of itself. Normally, Americans are involved in one little segment of the process. If it's cattle, some cowboys arrange for the cattle to be fed on the range. Then the cattle is trucked to another location, where somebody else bids on the cattle who may or not be the processor; somebody else does the slaughtering; somebody else the distribution and so on. So usually we only see a tiny part of the process we're involved in which is not entirely satisfying. And for many the product they deal in is money. Handling pieces of paper that only mean something because we've invested them with some kind of value; while the Italians for example deal mainly with tangible simple things that people can relate to: cheese, pork, leather, mushrooms, you see?
Much more gratifying than dealing with paper. Then in Italy, there is a feeling that Nature must run its course; if the cheese hadn't formed a mold yet, well, you have to wait til tomorrow. For the wine grower, if the grape hasn't matured, it simply isn't ready and you can jump up and down with your anxiety, if it's not ready, it's not ready. So, there is a certain naturalness that takes over, the tides, the phases of the moon, they all affect things. Only, Americans, try to take command of nature, trying to impose its own rules, its own laws. It only makes people frustrated with their lot. With this appreciation of Nature, Italians tend to eat mostly natural foods that are purchased daily in the market. Americans don't have time for that; they develop specialty foods that are processed, shaped and fried and devoured standing up and call it a life. The Italians take hours to eat. They make food an excuse for gathering and human interaction. They talk, they drink, they enjoy life. For Americans, food is just something to get out of the way as quickly as possible, preferably while working on the computer. The computer, too, has changed life for Americans along with TV. Whereby we used to all sit down as a family and watch the TV; today, most people have their own TV's because they each like different programming so they wonder off and then question why they feel so lonely, so isolated. Interestingly enough, a study in Time magazine showed that Americans spend on average fifty percent more time preening than they do reading; they spend more time watching TV than anything else, nearly four hours a day. Most of that time today is spent alone. How gratifying is that? We wonder why the Italians look happier. One reason has to be that they spend more time engaged in conversation, more time enjoying their dinners and drinking their wine than they do watching TV. Overall, if you've spent time in Italy, you see how many people walk to individual markets and ride their bicycles instead of taking their cars. They seem to be in good shape without worrying about whether their abs are defined or whether they need to renew their Hairclub membership or spend more time in the gym rushing, rushing, rushing. It's not that they work any less or do easier things, they just take everything in stride and understand their priorities.
Of course, it doesn't hurt when you live in a beautiful country either.

Our country may not be as scenic all over as Italy is but Americans can learn something from their Italian friends that might add happiness and even extend their lives.

Life is what you make of it.

Les