Thoughts About Conundrums.

Conundrums, dilemmas, decisions. Why does it seem like adult life is all about them?

In Italy we use an expression that perfectly describes what adult life can feel like sometimes. “Mai una gioia” (literal translation: never a joy) we say sarcastically whenever something we had high hopes for falls through. 

This gloomy expression became so predominant in my friends’ circle over the second leg of the current decade that, for the most part, we accepted long streaks of unfortunate events as simply a normal recurrence once you hit the “legal age” mark at 18–mai una gioia is our motto. 

How pessimistic of you! You may say, rightfully, while reading this, but this idiom is no more cynical than the habit of carrying a peppercorn 🌶️–or a santino in your wallet; or a chestnut in your pocket–everywhere you go to keep bad luck at bay. Italians can be very, VERY superstitious. 

Blame it on Catholicism and the presence of the Vatican on our sun-blessed land, but we can get pretty blasphemous and unholy when it comes to the evil eye. 
Matter of fact, whenever we [Italians] become the subject of the above-mentioned unlucky occurrences, our first reaction is to blame it on a hex. 

But while it is very easy to wash away responsibility by using supernatural reasons as a scapegoat for our demise, I think it is more productive to look at our ill-fated circumstances as a matter of decision-making.

To support my argument, I have a couple of examples that I’d like to bring to the stand as evidence. 

A couple of years ago, my friend Paola¹ (now happily engaged to a nice man) found out her boyfriend–let’s call him Fussi² for the story’s sake–was cheating on her through a food delivery app (yes, you read that right) after she uprooted her life, left a job she liked and moved to a whole new continent to support him on his ascent to the top rank in his line of work. 

One evening, almost a year after relocating and finally finding her place in the new city, she came home to an empty apartment. Surprised, she texted him asking about his whereabouts.
Fussi claimed he had gone to watch football with his French³ colleagues at some popular bar in a different neighborhood, quite far from their own.
Naively, despite a few cues of his lies lying around the house–his car keys were on the counter, and the city didn’t have a good public transport infrastructure–she believed him. She did have questions, but he nimbly shrugged them off during their brief conversation.

Shortly after the digital exchange, though, a Deliveroo notification pinged on Paola’s iPhone. Curiously, she opened the message. It read: “A new address was added to your account: Secret Lover’s house”. 

Appalled, she investigated further by opening the app–at the time, the couple shared the account due to her inability to open a bank account when they first moved and she didn’t have a job; they never cared to update it afterwards.

The new address was registered at a building down the street from their own complex.
Paola promptly texted her boyfriend pretending not to know anything to see how far he would take it. When he had not yet replied around twenty minutes later, she decided to walk over–in her pajamas–to the location listed to confront him face to face.
As most condos in the city, the building featured a concierge.
Nonchalantly, she showed the doorman a picture of Fussi and asked him if he had seen the guy come through because she had been told to come over but he wasn’t answering the phone. As expected, the concierge answered positively. The lie had caught up to Fussi!

Now, Paola had two options: 

1. To walk up to the apartment and beat him up, embarrassing him in front of whoever he was actually watching the game with. 

2. To elegantly let him know she knew he was full of it and walk away in style. 

After a few of her calls went unanswered, she texted him: “I know where you really are, I am downstairs. Either you answer the phone and explain, or I come up and make a scene.”
Fussi called her back pronto, making up some wack excuse to try to deescalate the situation. Paola walked back home and started packing a bag. The relationship was over.

A few days after the mishap, she moved out and Fussi entered a committed relationship with the lover (She is French, Paola is Italian. Double the outrage!!!) and eventually they had a baby while Paola remained single for years before finding her own French beau.

Now, while this story sounds like the plot of a tragicomic soap-opera where the main character is a low-budget Carrie Bradshaw in the season finale of Sex & the City, I promise that these are real life events. I wish I was that good at fiction.

It is exactly during the couple of years Paola spent navigating life as a single woman in her late twenties, that the Mai Una Gioia mantra began permeating our lives and subsequently turned into an inside joke. 

A few months after the dramatic breakup, she met a very handsome, French-Mexican ex-colleague of mine who swindled her with his charm without ever making their liaison official.
It was the typical situationship where you are left wondering what the fuck is going on half of the time. If you are a girl, you know what I am talking about.
Paola was discouraged but the irony of it all kept her upbeat. For the most part, we laughed about it. 

While this may prompt you to dust off your pink pussyhat and yell MEN ARE TRRRRRAAAAASSSHHHHHH out of the window until it echoes all the way to the Himalayas and back–and to an extent, I feel you–it’s important we rewind for a second and look at this tale of modern love with a critical, objective eye. 

Before moving away to help Fussi become a boss in his field, Paola knew he was a cheater.
Matter of fact, he had cheated on his ex-girlfriend with her, so she made a conscious decision to date somebody with poor morals. In a way we could keep disregarding accountability and blame the bad luck on karma, but since the point I am trying to make is about adult life as a constant conundrum, I want to focus on ramification. 

Life is like a game of Jenga (woah there, Forrest!) 

Day after day, we are faced with dilemmas and decisions. Based on which brick we choose to pick out, we can stumble, crumble or keep sturdy. Most of the time, what seems like bad luck or a curse is simply a consequence of the sheets we chose to make our bed with. And no, I am not victim blaming here. I do think there are certain incidents–sometimes extremely gruesome ones–that are beyond us⁴, but most of our outcomes in life depend solely on us. 

If only Paola had considered the fact that cheaters are usually recidivistic, maybe she wouldn’t have been subjected to the humiliation and shame that comes with finding out your significant other is betraying you.
If before catching feelings for the French-Mexican heartthrob she took time to survey his way of being, she probably wouldn’t have been disappointed. The signs were clear.  

At the same time, had she not made the decision to enter a relationship with Fussi, she wouldn’t have moved to that new city, settled there and eventually found a man that does love and care for her. Possibly, she wouldn’t be engaged now. The chain goes on. Nothing is definite. 

If I ponder on the times I found myself at a crossroads–and I somewhat discussed this in my past essays too–it’s easy to fall down a rabbithole and spend hours trying to find the origin of everything. Unfortunately, it would be a waste of time.
First, humans have yet to figure out how to time travel; secondly, surrendering to regret only leads to misery and annihilation.
For this, the best thing we can do is keep going. Each new day will present a new challenge. 

The second example I wanted to bring forward for corroboration is something that happened to me last week.
When I planned my trip to New York back in August, I originally bought a return fare that would keep me in the city from October until December.
Shortly after I entered my credit card details in the airline website, a big brand hit me up to consult on a project that would require my presence in Milan starting November.
I was excited to work on the project but displeased by the fact that I had to cut my stay in the US short. Regardless, I kept going about life as jolly as I could–to every slope, there’s a hill. 

As days went by and the date of my departure approached, more football related opportunities came my way; including my participation in a physical, sports themed talk panel.
The prospect of going back to Italy prematurely had gone from bleak to exciting…until it wasn’t anymore. 

On Thursday, after gathering data, researching and brainstorming for months, the client called me to tell me the project would not move forward.
All of a sudden, my presence in Italy wasn’t as necessary as it would have been had the work followed through.
I was faced with a question that tore me apart for days: should I stay or should I go?
As silly as that sounds, I could not bring myself to decide what I should do.
On one hand, I was free to honor my original plan and seek out more work opportunities in NYc; on the other, I had now committed to participating in the roundtable discussion. I lingered. I made a pros and cons list, I almost flipped a coin–that way I wouldn’t need to carry the burden.
Then, on the day of my flight, I walked past a corner store and saw a big sign: POWERBALL $1.9 BILLION! That was my signal. I had to stay and win the powerball. I skkkrt’d back, placed my bet and waited intrepidly for the draw. 

All jokes aside, unfortunately–obviously–I didn’t win the Powerball, but making the decision to stay opened doors for other valuable outcomes.
I will participate in the talk remotely (details can be found here) and I will work on projects locally before going back and making the decision to uproot myself from Milan and relocate my Italian homebase to Palermo.

Moral of the story: adult life is all about conundrums, but as long as we continue to show up, refine our decisions and live free of regret, things will pan out without too much effort. 

1. Fake name for privacy.

2. Also a fake name for privacy.

3. Keep this in mind, because it’s a key detail in the story.

4. Systems of oppression/violence are real and certified, but if we let them get in between us and our goals then we will die basking in our own misery.