“The Italians know that everything in their country is imbued with their spirit. They know that there is no need, really, to distinguish or to choose between the smile on the face of a cameriere and Donatello’s San Giorgio. They are all works of art, the great art of being happy and of making other people happy, an art, which embraces and inspires all other in Italy. The only art worth learning, which can never really be mastered.”-Luigi Barzini, ‘The Italians’
What is the Su Misura Life?
Su Misura in Italian means ‘tailor made’. It recalls my mother saying that clothes made ‘su misura’ either by her practiced hand, or by the hand of a local sartoor sarta, had a quality and a provenance unmatched by mass produced commercial wear.
It makes sense that one’s lifestyle choices should be tailor made to who one is, without apology, without ‘rules’, or the unconscious relinquishing of the true self. Sometimes we don’t know we’re giving in to the expectations of others. Life goes on its normal pace. We conform. We settle. We live less.
Until something sparks a reaction- an encounter, a solo trip, an observed injustice, a book, a film, a long walk or bike ride, a tug at the heart, a walk through a snow covered park on the first day of spring, or a book one plunges into, like an impassioned swimmer, into a cold sparkling lake…And it wakes us up….in time to see the rainbow
And then there is no stopping us…..
“Only the honest soul is free. It has its own logic and its own truth”Marc Chagall
‘Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect the more I feel alive’ Jhumpa Lahiri
While writing Sass, Smarts, and Stilettos I imagined the Su Misura Life in its pages. Life lessons gleaned from my mother and grandmother, from extraordinary women across continents, from summers in Italy, and the wisdom that seeps in after encountering difficult truths or finishing up one two many Campari cocktails.
The Su Misura Life is about those made-to-measure honest moments and sensory revelations we make time for because we can, each particle a gemlike reflection of what is possible.
So here’s to possibilities and revelations, to the virtue of procrastination and the clarity of distraction, and to lives fully lived.
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