I’m sitting at a beachside café on Bingin Beach in Uluwatu, Bali, and I’m filled with a giddiness reminiscent of first-date jitters. I wasn’t sure when it would hit—just that it would—and it has.
I’ve graduated college. A good one, for that matter, and managed to play college lacrosse all the while. In many circles that I’m a part of, saying you’re going to X college at 18 years-old implies that you will graduate from X college in four years (for some of us, it takes five). It’s been nice the past five years having college and lacrosse be “my job,” be “what I’m doing with my life.” Name drop the college + “lacrosse,” and you get some Oooh’s and Aaah’s in return.
Now, I’m not so much in the clear. We are hardwired to think What’s next? and that’s the question I’ve received from any new and old face for the past year. “You’ve got time,” they say, to console me. I feel that my saying, “Not sure, I like to write, I’ll figure it out,” is my effort to console them. I feel obligated to reassure them that I, likely, will not end up on the sidewalk with a sign.
I wish there was a widespread way to ask how someone’s doing without asking about their resumé. I do think that these people asking about my future are trying to show that they care. But can the question be replaced: What’s been making you happy lately? To which I’d respond, “My book.” Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney has proven to be the perfect companion as my friends and I attempt to “do Bali” in six days. Did we think that we could teleport everywhere, or that we were the only ones to think to vacation in Bali in June?
And yet, that’s my biggest worry—whether it will take 15 or 45 minutes to get to our reservation at Bali’s hottest beach club. That, and dodging any ice in my cocktails for fear of catching “Bali Belly”—a stomach bug that I, apparently, really don’t want. So, I will take my cocktails at room temperature—the horror!
A couple nights ago, the three of us—Mia, Lily, and I—threw on our bathrobes and watched Eat, Pray, Love. I’d never seen it, but each word is associated with a different location: eat = Italy; pray = India; love = Bali. We watched the Bali scenes as if we each were Julia Roberts ourselves, hanging on to symbols of love. But, I seemed to cling to a scene in a barbershop in Italy the most. Julia Roberts admits her guilt about having done nothing but eat, and learn the words of the foods she eats, since arriving three weeks prior. To which the Italian man getting a haircut responds, “You feel guilty because you are American—you don’t know how to enjoy yourself.”
This comment triggers the utterance of the Italian phrase “dolce far niente,” which means “the sweetness of doing nothing.” Americans need to be told that they deserve a beer, a nap, an ice cream cone without completing a task beforehand. I mean, how many times have you heard a guy, or gal, say “earn your beers” before completing a quick workout? Americans—we must check boxes, add it to the list, complete the list, add it to the resumé. We have not earned anything until we’ve done something tangible—and by some warped reasoning, equal—to the reward.
And so here I am, two days later, in a bikini, drinking a smoothie, eating fish tacos, overlooking the southeastern shore of Bali, unable to get “dolce far niente” out of my mind. Two days until the end of an epic grad trip around Southeast Asia with three of my closest friends. And it’s taken until the penultimate day to realize what is actually going on—zero, and I mean zero, responsibility.
The sweetness of doing nothing. I managed to do it for all but 90 seconds—put my book down, and watch the surfers roll in—until I couldn’t help but pick up my pen and write it all down.
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