About Stephania Varalli
Stephania Varalli was sweetspot.ca’s first employee and is currently off on one of her many adventures (though thanks to her life motto of "seemed like a good idea at the time," she still has a myriad of stories archived to enjoy).
Last week I asked my gay friends some questions about men that I (and many women) need the answer to. This week I thought I'd experiment with a new sector of society....
So I have an experiment for you to try. Find a group of old people, in their seventies or eighties preferably (I used my Aunts and Uncles), and ask them this question:
If you could pass on one piece of advice for how to live a good life, what would it be?
Don’t talk about other people; don’t worry about what other people think. Worry about yourself. If you’re not strong, how can you help anybody else? Qui pensa per se, pensa per tre. (Translation: Who thinks of themselves, thinks for three)
Hang in. This too shall pass. (This one was actually from my mother, who isn’t yet 60. But she’s a breast cancer survivor and my personal hero, so she made the cut.)
Don’t waste today.
My son went to Florida and had me watch his dog for a week. While he was there he called me three times! So I said to him: “You checking in on your dog?” He said back to me “Can’t a son call his mother?” So then they come back and pick up his dog and I don’t hear from him for a whole week. So I call him up: “Hi, can you bring your dog back?”
If opportunity knocks - answer.
Worrying is a waste of time. It won’t change anything. Things usually work out.
You can’t speak when you’re eating
All the freedom we have today, the young people don’t know where it’s coming from. I’ve seen a German soldier with a machine gun in my father’s stomach. We went through a lot. But we survived. (I could do a whole post on the crazy war stories they told. Like fishing with hand grenades. And going into hiding in the hills. And, as a 12 year old, breaking apart cannon shells by smashing it on a rock to sell the copper inside to the Germans…”Ya, a lot of kids died. But they didn’t know how to do it.” )