Is the Dolce Vita a sham?

That's what most Italians think and until not long ago, I was one of them.

I've dropped the bomb, I’ve put the words dolce vita and sham in the same sentence, so let’s get right to it. 

Before 2015, when I began to teach Italian online ( by accident!), I’d never heard people use this expression to describe life in Italy.

La dolce vita for me was the Fellini movie. Marcello Mastroianni in a state of grace and Anita Eckberg in the Trevi Fountain.

Then, in 2016, when I started All About Italian on Instagram, these two words began popping out everywhere.

Apparently, Italians all live la dolce vita

If you ask an Italian, he/she will probably snort in disapproval. And then start a long list of things that are hellish and that need solving yesterday. 

• What’s dolce about having some of the lowest salaries in Europe ? 

• What’s dolce about the insane red tape that accompanies every big step in life?

• What’s dolce about high unemployment rates that are forcing huge chunks of the population to leave the country?

And you know what?  Back in 2014,  I  would have been one of these people rattling out this list. I fully intended to leave Italy myself. 

Italians say that foreigners don’t know what they’re talking about and that they see things through rose-tinted glasses. And that they’re seeing Italy from the perspective of their privilege. 

They’re not wrong.

But here’s the thing. They’re not right, either.

What Italians say about their country is all true. But it’s not the whole story.

What’s the truth?

Amidst all the  problems ( remarkable) and confusion, Italians are still finding time every day to grab a quick coffee with friends, prepare a killer meal to eat with family seated around the table with a perfectly laid out table

They’re still finding the time to be elegant and stylish in every moment of the day.

They still take  passeggiate della domenica. 

They find the time to celebrate tradition and family.

They’re still taking time off to rejuvenate in the summer 

They pursue beauty in every shape and form. 

And lastly, and certainly not least, there’s the cuisine. 

They have a cuisine that allows people from ALL social classes to have healthy and delicious meals at prices affordable to anyone. 

When you live in a place, it’s like being in a relationship.

You’re too involved to see the bigger picture and take time to reflect that some things that you take for granted, don’t exist in other cultures. 

You don’t have the necessary distance to appreciate what you do have. 

I know that I learned to see Italy, for what it actually is, only in the last 6 years.  

It’s also thanks to the online world that I learned to distance myself and see the beauty of where I was.

I learned to appreciate what I had.

I discovered that there was balance between the tourist cliché and Italian negativity. 

Focusing entirely on one or the other aspect, is doing a disservice to everyone.

Yes, there’s the nepotism, the unemployment, the lowest salaries in Europe, a right-wing government ( don’t get me started), the confusion, the getting lost in endless debates.

The whole wording dolce vita sounds like an incredible joke at our expense. That’s what I have a big problem with.

Do you know where dolce vita comes from ? 

The expression came from the movie and more people should actually  watch it to understand Italy.

The only dolce vita that you witness in the movie,  is that of the American actors in post-war Rome. 

They’re living it up in Via Veneto at the time where Hollywood  flocked to Cinecittà to shoot movies. 

Italy at the time, was facing post-war poverty and gravitated around that world of celebrities and affluent people. It was building something over rubbles.

Mastroianni, throughout the story, always goes back to his life in a periferia degradata. 

Dolce vita isn’t said in a positive sense. It’s somebody else’s sweet life that we’re looking and dreaming of.

And that is the biggest lesson about dolce vita that we can take from the story.

Because that incredible knack that Italians had in post-war Italy of taking their cameras and simply filming life as it was while creating masterpieces, that is the most powerful message you can take in.

Better than the romantic tourist-sized version.

In those ruins, Italians found time to fall in love, drink good wine, make music, make art, build a future for their children, set the foundations of a more affluent country, create good music, design amazing cars and clothes and most of all, enjoy life.

That’s the lesson that is to be learned and that Italians are forgetting to notice now.

Yes, there are huge problems ( but to be honest, if you believe the news reports, Italy has always been teetering on the brink of disaster since I can remember) and within that chaos, we find spaces to build meaning and beauty.

Now, that life seems to have become so complicated, we absolutely need to remind ourselves of that meaning, of that beauty and hold on to our values.