by Fiona Best, Counsellor

My husband and daughter and I have just moved into an old cottage. Although it is structurally very sturdy, we’ve had quite a lot of cosmetic renovations to do. I met Salvatore a few months ago while I was walking Jack, our very old dog. He was painting the house two doors down from where we were renting. Each morning for four or five weeks we’d say hello and as time passed I could see and feel how quietly efficient he was at his job. Never did I sense urgency or impatience – just day after day, a bit at a time, Salvatore painted the whole house and he painted the high picket fence. Always Salvatore was happy to see us. He’d wave and we’d talk about the dog or the weather, and then he’d just go back to doing what was in front of him. No resistance, no complaints, no rush – start at 7am finish at 3pm, in almost all weather he would find something to paint. Effortlessly it seemed, the whole house, inside and out, was one day beautifully painted. After a couple of weeks of saying hello I said,

‘Hey Salvatore, would you paint my house if you have time?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘just give me your phone number and I will call you.’

A week or so later Salvatore rang and we made a time to see my house. He looked at it inside and out, gave me a very fair quote, and I agreed for him to start whenever it suited him.

How often over the years have I read self-help books and sought to do what famous spiritual people have suggested as ways to healing? Once I wouldn’t have even noticed Salvatore. Or perhaps I would have. Most likely I would have felt sorry for him. I would have felt sad that a man in his sixties had to paint houses for a living.

I would have missed his simple powerful wisdom.

Equanimity – that’s what Salvatore demonstrates. Rain, hail, flood or shine, Salvatore just paints what is in front of him.  He does have a plan. Difficult and dangerous work first, then according to weather and to the order he has developed over many years, one day at a time, he paints. He reminds me of the teacher in the Karate Kid, ‘Wax on, wax off,’ to me it’s how to do life.

‘I work for my boss for 40 years,’ Salvatore told me one day. ‘My boss, he died in 1997. He was good boss. The Company closed. We all lost our jobs, maybe 40 people. Now I work on my own.’ There was no bitterness or self-pity about the company folding. It just did. The boss died.  That was it.

Salvatore has two breaks in the day. He brings his two cans of coke and water with him. He has a smoke when he has a break, and I assume he eats something at lunchtime. In October Salvatore painted the inside of the house before we moved in. He removed all attachments on the walls, he puttied every hole, he filled every gap, and he painted up to five coats where it was needed.  Like a miracle, day at a time, the inside of the house was painted throughout.

It is now February and Salvatore has been painting the outside of the house for the past two weeks. This time we are living in the house. We moved here during the floods in January. At 7am Salvatore arrives. He has set himself up in the garage downstairs …radio, paint tins, brushes, cans, esky. He is always quiet; never wanting to disturb or intrude; he just minds his own business and works. When Salvatore needs something to be done he just tells me. For example, the week before he started the outside of the house he rang and said,

‘I’ll be starting Monday; you need to get the house washed before I start. It’s okay?’

‘Of course,’ I said, thinking that having only four days to get it organized might be pushing it given the recent floods in Brisbane and the demands on house washing businesses. Never the less, with the same clarity as Salvatore offered me, I rang and found a man who altered his schedule to fit me in. I just told him my circumstances and asked if he could help. No pleading, no urgency, no forcing, it just happened.

When we were deciding colours, Salvatore said, ‘What colour you want? Let me know tomorrow okay?’ And so we did.

Clear requests, no energy attached. This is what I need, tell me tomorrow. It is very good to be around Salvatore. I’m learning a lot.

This morning Salvatore said to me, ‘You look tired this morning.’

I said, ‘Maybe I am a bit tired, I’ve had some trouble sleeping, perhaps because it’s so hot.’

‘My wife, she gets too hot. She say her arms are burning.’ Salvatore rubbed his arms up and down to demonstrate his wife’s discomfort. ‘Always gets too hot. Cold is fine for her.’

‘Normally the heat isn’t so bad for me, it’s just the humidity I think.’

Then Salvatore, looking right into my eyes as he always does when we’re talking, said,

‘I tell my wife, “You think it is too hot, then you feel hot, if you just” …’ then Salvatore shrugged a little and raised hands palms upwards… “if you just …”

I interrupted and said,

‘If you just focus on doing what in front of you, you don’t notice it’s hot – it’s like thinking about being hot makes you feel hot; is that it?’

‘Yes, yes…too much thinking makes problem. “Just have a cold shower I say to my wife”… not too much thinking.’

Meanwhile as I listened, I was recalling my years of mindfulness practice, noticing my breathing, feeling my feet on the ground, noticing each footstep.

‘Is that not exactly what Salvatore is doing?’ I thought to myself.

‘When you’re high up on the ladder Salvatore, how do you keep safe?’ I asked.

‘I think about each time I move my foot, I focus on what I’m doing.’

‘So you pay attention all the time.’

Salvatore nodded and his head slightly to the left, humbly confirming what I said. Then he smiled a quiet smile, not a loud flashy smile, just a quiet one.

‘You know what Salvatore, this is what I teach people. Pay attention to what is in front of you. Forget the analysing, thinking, speculating, just be with what is.’

‘So what sort of work you do?’

‘Well, I started out as a physiotherapist, then I did counselling, then I did chaplaincy, and now I work with people who are depressed and anxious…people who are stuck in physical or emotional pain. I help them to find their strength and purpose. I help them to get moving again.’

‘It’s good, for me I don’t need to work, but I do. It makes me happy.’ I used to buy the lottery tickets, but no more. A few years ago I gave it up. I’m scared it will ruin my happiness if I win.’

I said, ‘I’ve heard so many stories about people having too much money so they give up their ordinary lives and then they are miserable.’

‘Yes,’ Salvatore said, ‘my friend, he was from Poland, he won two million dollars. Before he won, he had beautiful wife, two children, two cars and nice house. One year after he won 2 million dollars, no wife, no children, no house, no cars.’

Then the diminutive, aging Italian painter shrugged his shoulders again, widened his grey eyes and tightened his mouth slightly.

‘I’m a happy with what I have,’ he said in his quiet Italian voice. ‘My work, it a keeps me happy.’

He picked up his ladder, smiled quietly to me and said, ‘We talk again later.’

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