I know I’m an introvert, which is sometimes draining for me, but I work hard to pretend to be extroverted. Being timid, shy, or uncomfortable around strangers doesn’t help when you’re a professional performer.
Relationships are tight-knit in Italy, to the point that things a Japanese person would avoid saying or doing for fear of being seen as intrusive are completely normal. It’s not a country where you can just shuffle your feet and apologize for being shy. When you’re shopping and walk into a store, for example, it’s totally normal to tell the staff what you’re looking for and have them bring it over to show you. You can assume from all this that back-and-forth exchanges are essential to everyday life here.
The way people shop in Italy has changed a bit in recent years, and it’s now closer to how we do things in Japan. But twenty years ago when I first moved to Italy (and my Italian was sparse), the fact that I had grown up in Japan made me terrible at this back-and-forth and dread shopping. Back then, I missed the convenience of being able to wander around a store and just pick up what I wanted and pay for it.
It was probably once my conversational ability picked up that I started to enjoy the exchanges more. Once I understood that Westerners are clear about their preferences and that it’s completely normal to express them directly, a lot of things about family relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, and even work relationships started to make sense to me. Everyone is straightforward about what they want, and even if the things they say or do would generally seem egotistical or selfish in Japan, these back-and-forth exchanges gradually bring people closer together, and carry the expectation that the process will eventually lead to a point of compromise.
One of the great things about those close relationships is meeting groups of young volunteers once a year when I go to the grocery store. They stand at the entrance to the supermarket and hand you plastic bags that you can fill with food and purchase for needy people, which you then hand back to them. You can buy anything you like as long as it’s nonperishable—even just a single item. Pasta, rice, canned fish, biscuits… anything! This food relief project is the most widespread of the many volunteer activities in Italy, and it has been going on for 25 years.
A lot of young people participate in the program, since Italian parents strongly encourage their kids to get involved by teaching them the significance of volunteer activities. Apparently they tell their kids that they’ll have a life of setbacks and failures if they don’t develop the heart to serve people—that good grades mean nothing without love and good character.
The program has gotten bigger each year, and now there are nearly 150,000 volunteers of all ages participating around the country. What’s more, they created a system in 2010 for people in detention centers to participate as volunteers as well, making it an incredibly well-respected program with real social impact.
So whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, I hope that after reading this you can’t help but see the benefit of forming tight-knit relationships—even if it might feel a bit intrusive at first.
