I can honestly say that over the past 35 years of my life I have always been very lucky. Lovely parents, health, a fun younger brother to grow up with, lots of friends, sufficient wealth, frequent holidays, an athletic body to do well in sports, and a decent face to do not scare women away. What else could I want?
In fact until 17 years old I was perfectly happy, but then something changed and just recently, by thinking retrospectively, I was able to identify the reasons: I had started to think outside of the box and as new ways of thinking emerged I began contradicting authority, whether that was coming from my parents, professors, priests, or coaches.
Probably because of my social background, my feelings never escalated to serious consequences or disruptive behaviours, but I can understand why others could act differently. Among the main alterations that I remember surely was the end of my church days while my family continued to go united every Sunday morning. Next there was the progressive falling of my grades. I did not see any relevance in the academic subjects that I was studying and I limited myself to a pass so that I did not have to repeat the Year or study over the summer break for make-up exams. My fifth and last year of high school (i.e. public schools in Italy have five years) was definitely the worst as I had hot verbal discussions with most of my professors and graduated with a very poor grade. Finally and most importantly was the damage that my behavior was causing at home with daily discussions with my parents.
Things did not improve at all after graduation. The only thing in my life that was going well at that time was swimming, even though performance was heavily influenced by the negative environment in which I was living. I had started a degree in economics, but once again I had found the classes to be totally irrelevant and detached from reality. As a consequence relations with my parents worsened and they repeatedly threatened to stop me from swimming if my grades did not improve. Even if I was to totally apply myself, this would not have been an easy task considering the high training regime in swimming (12 sessions/week), the long distance between home, school and the pool (2-3 hours in the car every day), the time clashes between training and lecture times, and not less importantly the extremely poor quality of the Italian public university system of the 90's, characterized by outdated teaching methods and failing of 50%-80% students in each class.
After one year I was totally exhausted, getting more and more depressed every week and I did not know how to change the situation, or better I did not know how to change it without coming into serious conflict with my parents. Eventually, after watching 'The Program', an American movie on sport life in college, I had a vision and decided to apply for an athletic scholarship in the U.S.A. Of course I did not have any contacts, I did not speak English, and I had never lived outside of Italy. Nevertheless I was extremely determined, so I began living a double life as I did not want to tell anything to anybody until I was ready. That was the year 1995 and the Web was something still totally unknown in Italy, so finding information and getting in touch with people overseas was not an easy task.
After 6 months my English had improved to a level that allowed me to barely pass the TOEFL test, I was ranked among the top 8 swimmers in Italy in my main event, and I had sent letters to 50 American universities that had swimming programs in the first Division of the NCAA Championship. Now I just had to wait... After a month I started receiving letters in the mail from the USA. At that point I had to come clean and inform my parents of the situation. I will always remember that conversation; it was quick and simple. All they said was: "that's OK with us, as long they pay for your tuition". America was renowned for their success in sports and they could not even conceive the possibility that some University would have recruited me on a full athletic scholarship. As a matter of fact, most of the letters were simply stating that I had been accepted into their programs, but I would have had to pay all of my fees; others were offering a partial tuition, a good offer but not sufficient in my case. As weeks passed, I started receiving less and less mail, and when I was almost giving up, I received the letter I was waiting for... University of the Pacific in California was going to give me a full scholarship for the entire duration of my studies plus a monthly living allowance. GREAT!!!
I was so happy as I ran to tell my family. That must have been the happiest day of my life! They were also proud of me and from that day forward they always supported my decision and helped me in whatever way they could. By the summer I was all set and ready to go with my 20kg of luggage. A new life was ahead of me or at least I thought so as I was turning my back to all the problems of the past.
Life in America proved to be quite easy. I was doing great in both school and swimming and all the parties I was going to made me forget the real reasons behind my original unhappiness. Let's stop my narrative for one second and analyse the situation.
- 1) At 21 years of age I was living alone for the first time in my life. This clearly was the opposite of a life spent at home with your parents constantly arguing against your way of thinking. In brief I no longer had to face the authority of my parents, a dream shared by many teenagers.
- 2) At school the classes were much easier, the content more practical, and the relationships with the professors much more direct and personal. Once again the opposite of what I was used to in Italy where students listened to the lectures in crowded movie theatres and professors never interacted with the students.
- 3) The 12 session2 per week in the pool remained as such, but the context had changed. A different coach, different teammates, different pool length (25 yards), outdoor, etc. Once again, changes from what I had been used to for many years.
- 4) My social life also had a significant twist. I was often invited to parties, had girlfriends of different nationalities, was regarded as an outstanding athlete, etc. Basically, I was living the movie plot of 'The Program'.
Life continued normally until I graduated in the summer of 1999. I had speeded up my studies as much as possible because my native country still had unpaid and mandatory military service in place and I had no interest in wasting 12 months of my life in the middle of nowhere. The only way around it was for me to get a full time job overseas before my 25th birthday and that of course implied having finished school by then. I resolved the army issue by setting up a company (Incorporated) and getting employed by it. The second challenge to overcome was my American visa. I was on a 12 months working permit on the way of obtaining an H1-B employment visa through sponsorship by an online retail company when the Internet boom collapsed and as a result the company I was working for went bankrupt meaning that my visa application also got refused. Without a visa I had to depart the USA, but in Italy I still had the dispute with the army, so I opted for Australia. That continent had always fascinated me and I was dreaming of a life in the tropics.
The drive behind this new adventure was a new lifestyle which I had imagined in a tropical paradise. Given the situation I was coming from (i.e. departing a country not voluntarily but because of visa problems), I soon devoted myself to obtain a PR (permanent residency), this time around without the assistance of any law firm. To do so I had to study in an area where Australia had skills shortage, so I picked ICT. After 18 months I had a Master in Information Technology and my PR.
This was the third bus stop of my life. I had studied IT only because was aligned to my previous management degree and it had allowed me to quickly obtain the PR, but I was not interested in the field. So what could I have done now that I was happily living with my girlfriend in Australia? What job was going to make me happy? I have tried it all since then, from becoming a scuba diving instructor to completing a doctorate degree, from being a restaurant waiter to working as a company director, from a swimming teacher to an academic researcher, from a business owner to a university lecturer, from a management consultant to a research commercialization expert. Although quite successful in all of these jobs, none of them made me really happy. They all seemed worthless in the bigger scheme of things.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that work, although necessary, cannot make me happy! So I decided to accept that and search for happiness elsewhere. Leaving out considerations about interpersonal relationships, if it wasn't work that could make me happy what could have been? Well, the only other thing to always be present in my life had been sport and in particular swimming. So once again I looked for happiness through success in swimming and again after a few years I reached the top 8 in the nation at the age of 31 (the oldest in the field), but real happiness was not there either.
Good investments made over the previous few years had allowed me to live semi-retired for a while and to spend the following 3 years travelling and devoting time to extensive reading while looking at life from a much broader perspective. Since then, I have changed my view of the world and life. Although a clear cut from my previous way of thinking is probably still too hard for me to make, I am now regularly involved in meditation exercises, I enjoy physical activities that are not purely competition-based such as kung-fu, yoga, and tai-chi, and while I work because a job is necessary and represents an essential component of anyone's life, I remain indifferent to the charm of career, success, and money, if these risk to disrupt the balance in my life.
The journey is still far from over, but has been fascinating so far and I have discovered many new aspects about myself. In the next posts, which hopefully I will be able to regularly write every month, I will touch on the mental steps that I went thorough in rediscovering my inner-self as well as discuss topics such as happiness, professional sport, society, human nature, success, life, death, memories, family, and many others.
