Living La Dolce Vita- that's why

It's Day 2 of the 10-day blog challenge, and today's task is to write about WHY.   Why is it we want to live our ideal lifestyle, whatever that may be.

This blog post is in response to Natalie Sisson's 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 2 

This one is easy for me. I get asked that same question almost every day. Why did we want to give up our lives in the US to move to Italy? And I don't have to hesitate about my response. I remember having to do a great deal of soul-searching 10 years ago when we were planning our new life on the other side of the Atlantic.  Then, and now, the WHY is the same.

We'd made several month-long vacations in Italy, most of them here in Venice. Upon re-entry to our normal lives, we always found ourselves missing the slower lifestyle of the Italian culture. We felt trapped by our careers, by our American lifestyle of working practically non-stop.  We were slaves to the American way of living, which we began to see as a culture of greed. We strived for bigger and better, more stuff. And the more "stuff" you had, the more you had to work to support it.  It Italy, we saw people exist with much less, but seemed to be much happier in their smaller existence. We envied that happiness, that joyful spirit we witnessed in Italy.

Rather than be envious of that lifestyle, we chose to adopt it. What was previously important to us- advancing in our careers, earning more money, having more, just wasn't making us happy anymore. And why would we want to spend our days being unhappy? It didn't make sense to us anymore. What became much more important was living simpler, living healthier, living stress-free.

We had to make some tough decisions about getting rid of cars, houses, stuff and learn to live with much less. Doing away with all that stuff was a burden lifted off our shoulders. It was liberating. It gave us our life back.

And so the Why is something I have no trouble answering. To live "la dolce vita". The sweet life.