A few weeks ago, I had lunch in a small trattoria in Ascona. I was alone and the chef of the restaurant gave me a nice table overlooking the outside terrace. As I always do when I am in a restaurant alone, I observed the scenery around me.  Most people spoke Italian and were a mix of Ticinesi and Italiani. A couple with a baby, another couple a bit older, 5 men in heated discussion about the latest soccer game, a group of French tourists…

All talking in their own bubble of life.

The chef, likely in his late sixties, spontaneously brought me salame e pane. Looking around me I quickly realized that there was no menu card but that it was a fixed lunch menu, which, in all honesty, I did not really like. Adapting to the southern ‘go with the flow’ I looked at the salami, ate a piece of bread and enjoyed my first course tuna salad.

Each time the chef came outside on the terrace he exchanged a few words with me, taking good care of his lonesome customer. I noticed how he went to the couple with the baby,  started talking to them and gave the baby a beautiful smile. When he brought me my espresso after I had kindly declined the main course he touched my arm. He looked me straight in the eyes and said: ‘I always focus most on the babies and the really old people in the restaurant because they bring most wisdom. Inside the restaurant sits a lady of 96 and she still rides her motor cycle. Can you believe it?’ I could read admiration in his eyes.

We talked a bit more and I finished my espresso, paid and walked outside. His words lingered on.  I thought about the purity of a baby. I thought about the wisdom one often discovers when talking to people in their eighties or nineties, or people at the end of their lives. I thought about my own family where generations constantly mix due to the fact that my late husband was 22 years older than me. We now miss family members in their seventies and nineties, but otherwise all decades are represented. I love it. I love the exchange of opinions, perspectives, outlooks on life.

I believe that this exchange between generations is really valuable since it expands our horizon and stretches our thinking. And I understand increasingly more that most wisdom may indeed come from the very young and from people facing the end of their lives. At the beginning and at the end of our lives there is more purity and less ego. Both ends of the life cycle have nothing to prove.

I think I will go back go that trattoria.