Il bel far niente is Italian for “the beauty of doing nothing” - an ability that most Americans lack. As Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love:

“Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that’s not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.”

Her difficulty with pleasure sounds familiar:

“A major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.”

How did she change her beliefs about pleasure? Instead of attacking her pursuit of pleasure in Italy as a homework assignment, asking “How is pleasure most efficiently maximized?” and interviewing Italy’s best pleasure seekers, she says:

“When I realized that the only question at hand was, “How do I define pleasure?” and that I was truly in a country where people would permit me to explore that question freely, everything changed. Everything became . . . delicious.”

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