My Profession Is Living Life (and Other Things I Thought About in a Taxi in Milan)

I was sitting in the back of a taxi in Milan when an old Italian song came on the radio.

This is not, in itself, particularly remarkable.

Italy has a rather impressive ability to make ordinary moments feel as though someone has quietly added a soundtrack. You can be sitting in traffic, watching the city move past the window, mentally calculating whether you’re going to arrive three minutes early or twelve minutes late, and somehow there is still music playing that makes the whole thing feel vaguely cinematic.

The song was Una donna per amico, by Lucio Battisti. I hadn't thought about it in years.

And then I heard a line: "Ma il mio mestiere è vivere la vita. Che sia di tutti i giorni o sconosciuta."

Roughly: "But my profession is living life, whether it's the everyday kind or the unknown."

And suddenly, somewhere between one traffic light and the next, I stopped listening to the song and started thinking about that sentence.

My profession is living life.

What a strange and beautiful idea.

When Living Becomes Something We Do in the Background

Most of us are very good at having lives. We have schedules. We have appointments.

We have groceries to buy, emails to answer, laundry that apparently reproduces overnight, and passwords we're supposed to remember despite being repeatedly instructed not to use the same one twice.

We move through our days doing what needs to be done. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Routines are useful. Habits save cognitive energy. Predictability helps us feel safe.

But sometimes, without really noticing, we become so busy managing life that we forget to actually inhabit it.

We wake up. We do the things. We cross things off lists. We prepare for tomorrow.

And then tomorrow arrives, bringing, rather inconveniently, another list.

Life becomes something happening quietly in the background while we're busy organizing it.

What If Living Were Your Mestiere?

The Italian word mestiere is interesting. It can mean profession, occupation, craft.

Something you do. But also something you learn to do well. Something you practice.

And I think that's what stayed with me.

What if living were something we practiced?

Not in the dramatic, "seize every moment" kind of way. I don't think we need to greet every Tuesday morning as though we're standing on top of a mountain with our arms open to the universe.

Some Tuesdays are just Tuesdays.

Sometimes living your life means making dinner, picking someone up from school, sitting through a meeting that absolutely could have been an email, or going to bed early because you're exhausted.

But perhaps the question isn't whether the moment is extraordinary.

Perhaps it's whether we're actually there for it.

Living According to Your Values in Everyday Life

ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) has a lot to say about this.

One of its central ideas is values. Values aren't goals.

You don't complete "being loving" on Wednesday and cross it off the list. You don't finish "curiosity" by Friday afternoon and move on to "courage."

Values are more like directions. They help us decide how we want to move through our lives, including the completely ordinary parts.

If connection matters to me, perhaps I put my phone down while someone I love is telling me about their day.

If curiosity matters, perhaps I notice something I've walked past a hundred times.

If kindness matters, perhaps I choose how I respond in a difficult conversation.

Nothing spectacular has happened. No orchestra begins playing. Nobody applauds. But we are living in the direction of what matters.

And perhaps that is what it means to make living a mestiere.

And Then There's the Unknown

The second part of the lyric may be the one I love most.

Life can be di tutti i giorni, the life of every day.

Or sconosciuta, unknown.

We tend to organize our lives as though we know which one we're going to get.

We make plans. We imagine futures. We build mental maps.

And then, as I've written about before, occasionally there's a bear in the backyard.

Something changes. Something begins. Something ends.

We receive news we weren't expecting. We meet someone. We lose someone.

We find ourselves somewhere we never planned to be.

The unknown isn't separate from life. It is life.

Just as much as the Tuesday morning coffee and the laundry and the commute.

Values Don't Tell Us What's Going to Happen

I think this is one of the things I appreciate most about ACT. It doesn't promise us certainty. It doesn't suggest that if we think positively enough, set the right goals, or become sufficiently enlightened, life will cooperate with our plans.

It probably won't.

Values aren't a map telling us exactly where life will take us. They're more like a compass.

When the landscape changes (and eventually it always does) we may not know exactly where we are.

But we can still ask:

"What matters to me here?"

"Who do I want to be in this moment?"

"What small step would move me in that direction?"

Sometimes the answer is brave. Sometimes it's tender. Sometimes it's simply: "Today, I need to rest." That counts too.

You Don't Have to Live Every Day Intensely

There's a version of "live your life fully" that I find slightly exhausting. It usually involves sunsets, spontaneous travel, and people who appear to have unlimited vacation days.

Real life is not like that. Nor should it be. Living fully doesn't mean squeezing meaning out of every second. It doesn't mean constantly improving yourself. And it certainly doesn't mean feeling grateful when something painful happens.

Sometimes life hurts. Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes the unknown is exciting.

Sometimes we would very much like the unknown to return itself and give us back the perfectly ordinary Tuesday we had before.

Living according to our values doesn't require us to like everything life brings.

It simply asks us to remain present enough to choose how we want to meet it.

Somewhere in Milan

By then, the song had ended. The taxi kept moving.

Milan continued doing what Milan does, people walking quickly, scooters appearing from directions scooters really shouldn't appear from, buildings that have been standing there far longer than any of us.

And I kept thinking about those words.

Il mio mestiere è vivere la vita.

My profession is living life. Not mastering it. Not controlling it. Not making every moment meaningful.

Living it.

The ordinary version. The unexpected version. The version we planned.

And the version waiting around a corner we haven't reached yet.

Perhaps that's enough of a calling for any of us. To show up for the life that is here. To move, whenever we can, in the direction of what matters.

And to remember, every once in a while, that while we're busy planning, organizing, worrying, achieving, and trying very hard to figure everything out... this is it.

This is the life we are supposed to be living. Even if, at the moment, we're just sitting in traffic in the back of a taxi in Milan.

Related Posts

If this reflection resonated with you, you might also enjoy these explorations of values, change, and finding your way through the unexpected:

• The Missed Turn (and Why My GPS Is Better at Change Than I Am): A missed exit becomes a reflection on psychological flexibility, cognitive reappraisal, and learning to move forward when life doesn't follow the route we expected.

• The Bear in the Backyard (and Why Our Brains Don't Like Surprises): An unexpected encounter with a black bear explores what happens when reality doesn't match our mental maps—and how curiosity can help us meet the unexpected.

• The Decision You Can't Quite Make: Why some choices feel so difficult, and how making room for uncertainty can help us move toward what matters rather than waiting for perfect certainty.

• IFS for Navigating Big Life Changes: How Your Inner Parts Respond to Change: A deeper look at why transitions can activate different parts of us, and how approaching those reactions with curiosity and compassion can help us navigate change.