Felicita

A woman I know (I'll call her Cindy) is between jobs and looking for something new. She's not sure what. The other day Cindy and I were chatting and I asked if she had ever considered going back to school.

She gave me the Survivorman face and sneered, "Why?"

I fumbled for an answer. "Well, what are you interested in? Maybe you could learn a new skill and pursue a new career."

"I'm not really interested in anything," she said.

Her response stunned me. If I were independently wealthy, I would, in between traveling around the world, volunteer part-time at Legal Aid and spend the rest of my life as a student. I'd take literature courses, political science courses, learn how to paint, learn how to work with wood, learn languages, go to culinary school. I can't imagine a more ideal existence. The thought of someone having no desire to learn anything new makes me sad.

I heard somewhere once that happiness is best defined as the pursuit of attainable goals. I googled it but didn't find anything that triggered any memories, so it's probably from a movie I saw. Anyway, that makes sense to me. I'm at my happiest when I'm learning something or trying something challenging or looking forward to something.

So I've decided to learn Italian.

I've been feeling kind of blah and stagnant lately, but my neighbor gave me a couple of Rosetta Stone discs with about 15 different languages on them. I love the way Italian sounds (plus I could follow Italian opera without the supertitles), so I started working my way through the lessons, about 45 minutes a day. I now know a bunch of nouns and verbs and adjectives, and can put rudimentary sentences together. I walk into Zeke's room in the morning and say, "buon giorno, bambino!" If I'm outside and I see a bird in the sky, I think to myself, "l'uccello sta volando."

I'm having a blast.

When I'm done with Italian, maybe I'll tackle French.