Hello and welcome to the Bridgetown Daily for Friday, June 19th.

If we haven't met, my name is Colin and I am on the community's team here at Bridgetown.

The summer of 2018, my wife and I took a dream vacation to Italy and it was the trip

of a lifetime.

We found love with all things, Italian culture, the food, the warmth, the pace of life,

the lotto, which was basically our fancy way of justifying lots of ice cream, all of

it.

And while there, we were able to meet up with an old friend of ours who is an American,

who married an Italian boy and has since settled in the hilltop town of Cortona in Tuscany,

where she now spends her days working out of vineyard and painting.

I know.

Hard life.

As we were catching up over some wine, something she highlighted was how in the States, whenever

we meet someone, the first thing we asked them is what do you do?

And then if the conversation keeps going, we might ask them what they're going to do next

or what's next for them.

But in Italy, she pointed out how she would go to multi-hour dinners with people she hasn't

met before and not one time would someone bring up what she did for work or much less

ask what's next for her.

And what it revealed to me was aside from the obsession with career and status that we

have here in the States, is how we live in a culture that is always focused on where

you are going or on what's next.

...