Last week in my ‘Italian Flavors’ episode, I spoke to all of you about the phrase that I’ve learned in Italy called ‘Il dolce far niente.’ And it means ‘the sweetness of doing nothing.’ And I refer to it as doing nothing, not being lazy, just being in the moment, mindful in solitude.

It does not mean that you are alone, you are just in solitude. You are with yourself, with your thoughts and reflections, watching the people going by while you drink your coffee or sitting by the ocean and just looking at the waves.

Webster Dictionary defines solitude as ‘the quality or state of being alone or remote from society, seclusion.’ And in thesaurus for the word solitude, they are quite negative. It is confinement, it is vacuum, isolation, seclusion, segregation, aloneness, withdrawal or ghettoization, lonesomeness.

Wow, so many negative words for the word solitude. I don’t think ‘Il dolce far niente‘ means isolation or lonely. ‘Il dolce‘ means the sweetness, sweetness of being in solitude.

It is not a negative thing. Frankly, I look forward to being just in solitude. The air has a different weight when the house is finally quiet and I am literally alone.

I am just loving it. The only one to report to is me. And I can do whatever I want, if it is practicing my piano, spending time in my studio, programming East to West, finding new music, or whatever it is I want to do. Read, take a nap, whatever it is.

Or sometimes just sitting outside in my backyard and just looking at the trees and the birds. ‘Il dolce far niente‘ is not about being alone. It’s being ‘all one.’ It’s that moment when you stop performing for the world and just do things that you want to do.

You know, we all spend much of our lives trying to fill up gaps and silences. We do it with work, we do it with scrolling on our phones and there is constant, constant noise of trying to be productive.

I think we have programmed our minds to think that if we’re not doing something, we’re just simply wasting our time. But there is a massive shift between being alone and finding that solitude. That’s what I’m talking about.

Think about when was the last time you sat with a cup of coffee or glass of wine and you did not reach for your phone? No agenda, no to-do list. Solitude is a choice.

Being alone and loneliness is circumstance. So tonight I invite you to lean into the sweetness of doing absolutely nothing. I mean, you can do whatever you want to do while you’re listening to East to West. Let’s listen, enjoy, reflect and stay with me for the next couple of hours.”