Thanks for What?

A Roman friend of ours recently confessed to me what might be the country’s worst-kept secret:

Italians are a people who love to complain.

It’s a fundamental part of the national psyche. This can be uncovered even by a casual tourist in one conversation with a local taxi driver. Lamentarsi, to lament, is something of a way of life, even for people who live in one of the most indisputably beautiful places in the world.

So it struck me as perfectly Italian when at one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations at our home in Le Marche, one guest weighed in like a sour cherry dropped in the cranberry sauce. As I made a valiant effort to explain the spirit of the American holiday to these rookies (I didn’t even try to tackle the whole pilgrim and Native American thing), our friend Vittorio leaned forward in his chair and raised his hand to say “basta”.

“Lo so, lo so…” he interrupted. “Thanksgiving is to give thanks. Of course. Capisco.” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “But thanks for what?”

Probably most of us have felt like that at one time or another. To be fair, Vittorio was a geometra, which in Italy is a profession that’s a cross between an architect and a general contractor. So his days were defined by an endless sequence of problems to be solved. I suppose all of our days are.

The funny thing was that Vittorio had nothing of the world-weary cynic about him. Not a shred of New York angst or Parisian ennui. He’s the kind of guy who, at the end of an epic three-hour group dinner, could good-naturedly persuade a weary restaurant owner to run to the bar next door and pick up panettones for dessert. He was always ready with a work-around solution, a funny quip, a boyish enthusiasm for the next adventure.

Like most of us, he wasn’t down on life— just in the middle of it, with all of the inevitable frustrations that one finds there. When you’re lost in the forest, it’s not the best time to appreciate the magnificence of the trees. Sometimes you need a little distance.

A friend visited us in Rome last weekend, and as is inevitable in this city, the days were full of more richness than could be properly absorbed. After a day of visiting the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseo, Bernini’s turbulent statues in Piazza Navona and the solitary majesty of the Egyptian obelisk in Piazza del Popolo, we went to a concert that closed the Rome Jazz Festival: a tribute to Pino Daniele, one of Italy’s best known singer-songwriters from the Seventies.

The show closed with “Napule È’”, Daniele’s ode to his hometown of Naples, which captures the city in all of its beauty and chaos. As one might expect from a song about a place where the past is always more present than the here and now, it carries an undercurrent of melancholy— memories of long days in the sun, dark, twisting alleys, and the age-old scent of the sea.

“Napoli is a thousand colors…Napoli is a thousand fears….”

As the crowd sang along, it struck me that this was the point of all of that we’d been experiencing across the city that day: the music, painting, architecture and sculpture. The whole world of art is here to give us that necessary distance—to allow us to step back from the blinding sandstorm of our own existence and for a moment see the world from the outside looking in.

Thanks for what?

When Vittorio asked me, all I could answer was “For this. For this moment”. Not for a self-congratulatory list of specific blessings, but for the whole buffet table of life, even the vexing problems that occupy our mind and give our life purpose. Thanksgiving for the chance to be together with family, friends and strangers in all their exasperating complexity, to laugh and cry and argue with each other, to rest and complain and each morning wake up to another day in the sun.

For those who celebrate it, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. And to all of you, I send out my deepest gratitude for your support of Life Lived Italian. I so appreciate your readership, your comments, and your willingness to share the posts with others.