Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Dolce Far Niente

In Italian "dolce far niente" literally means "sweet doing nothing."

Isn't it delightful that a culture values pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness so much that they have a common expression for it?!

I try to make every Sunday a dolce-far-niente-kind-of-day, but the last few weeks have been quite full of activity. Full of wonderful doing, mind you, but doing none-the-less.

Today has been wonderfully unstructured. We didn't *have to* do anything or be anywhere.

We had friends over for a lovely brunch of local, free-range eggs and homemade cinnamon rolls. We took a walk in the rain. We played hide-and-seek. We read stories.

My husband and son are playing soccer in the rain at this very moment. I'm going to join them.

Today I'm rejoicing in the dolce far niente.

2 comments:

Colleen said...

Oh, I love the concept of "sweet doing nothing". Lots has been going on in my life, and my partner has been out of town fro two weeks with his ill mother. So, our son and I have been on our own, enjoying time together and taking care of everyday business like fiddle lessons, 8th grade play, baseball games, full time work and school etc. This weekend we were supposed to go to a dear friend's son's Bar Mitzvah 5 hours away. At the last minute I decided (with the help of my dear friend) that I needed to stay home and just be at home. That is what we did, and in between the school concert and two baseball games I savored the sweet doing nothing time.

Stacey said...

@Colleen-
I'm so glad the idea of sweet doing nothing resonated with you too!

Maybe we can start a dolce far niente movement in the U.S.!