At the beginning of the semester, I asked myself: Which is better, America or Italy? The answer came to me a while ago, and even though I get the feeling it won’t be surprising, this is a good time to reveal it.

Getting to know Italy was just like getting to know new people. At first it might be hard to imagine them with any serious problems. But the more you get to know them, the more you realize that they have flaws. Whether they hide them well or have yet to realize them, those major problems are definitely there somewhere.

Both Italy and America suffer from imperfections. In my eyes, however, America manages to be the “lesser of two evils.”

During a meeting with an Italian student, it really hit me how flawed the politics in Italy are — though the same could be said for America. For example, regions in Italy are asking to secede, simply because of who is in charge of them. There’s a media divided by different viewpoints, so people only watch what they agree with. And there’s discrimination from Christians to Muslims and Islamists due to the power of the church that even affects Protestants.

Some people, like my own host mom, even believe that all democrats in government are communists. In America, we have witnessed something similar. Former U.S. Rep. Allen West claimed that 80 Democrats in the Congressional Progressive Congress were communists just last year. Plus, a third party in both countries is slowly growing with an anti-establishment message. In America, it’s the Tea Party. In Italy, it’s the Five Star Movement.

There’s even a similar divide between the north and the south in Italy. A student I met with said the north is seen as more business focused and prideful, whereas the south is seen as more loud, trashy and casual.

But thinking about all of this made me wonder why discovering which country was better really mattered to me — or if one really could be superior. Neither seems to be the “ideal” country, yet look where they have brought me. I’ve had an incredible semester in Italy.

Regardless of how messed up my homes are, the lives I have in them are still good. I’ve gone abroad to so many different places arguably even worse in the big picture, yet these have also been the highlights of my time here. How does that work out?

While I should be aware of the big picture politics, I shouldn’t base so much of my life around them, either. Whether I’m in Italy or America, the country I’m living in will always have its flaws, and I’ll always question how it functions. But these things aren’t worth the majority of my time anymore.

What is worth my time, and everyone else’s, is pulling meaningful experiences out of indecipherable messiness. So what I’ve learned: If you travel abroad, you should eat new foods, try to understand people in a different culture, volunteer and more. Those are the parts that really matter, even if they are smaller.

With that, I started caring less about my little comparison game, and instead about pulling all the happiness and lessons I could out of Florence. That’s what’s letting me go back home without any regrets.

Max Antonucci is a junior newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears every Tuesday in Pulp. Visit his website at www.MaxwellAntonucci.com, find him on Twitter at @DigitalMaxToday or email him at [email protected].

Published on December 3, 2013 at 12:50 am