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How to Romanticise Your Life

I talked somebody off a ledge last month. And now I want to talk you into dancing far far away from it.

By emPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
Top Story - May 2021
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How to Romanticise Your Life
Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

I talked somebody off a ledge last month.

He was a stranger, he was struggling, he was calling out for help. Whilst the entire thing took place online — and I don’t know quite how seriously he meant it — I wasn’t taking any chances. It was 1am, I was four seconds away from meeting Robert Pattinson in the dream realm, and then I caught sight of his plea. I knew of him, but I didn’t know him — and I knew I needed to help.

“Just do me one favour okay? Just keep living. Give yourself a handful of days at least, hold off from doing anything bad, and take one thing at a time. This doesn’t mean you have to be productive or moving or even human in these next few days. All you have to do is keep existing. There’s no pressure or expectation. You can be sad and angry and scared, but the important thing is: you must be living. That’s all I’m asking. Just save your life for now and we can work on mending it tomorrow.” — that’s one of the things I said to him.

I don’t know if that’s what I should have said, but I did. I know there are many things you can do and say to help diffuse the situation, but in those moments I just wanted him to divert his attention away from the terrors swarming his brain and give him something else to focus on. An easy thing to ask, a hard thing to do, and the only thing that matters.

He’s okay now, he’s living and breathing and alive, and that’s the best thing anybody can be. When somebody is teetering so close to the edge, you cannot expect them to be anything more than that, not right away. The darkness is suffocating and they must first learn how to breathe again before they can begin to find their way through it.

“I wrote a suicide note earlier. I planned to take my life tonight. But I think I might delete it for now.” He told me.

I replied, “Delete it forever. The next and only thing you are going to write is your bestselling life story. So then delete that note, delete your trash, then lob your laptop out the window. And man do I hope you didn’t use Comic Sans.”

That’s when I started thinking (first time in eleven months. It was due).

How do we make sure that we keep clear of that ledge? Not just others, but ourselves too. How do we shut out the darkness, step into the sunlight and see the world written in bright, bold Times New Roman?

How exactly do we romanticise our lives?

By Romanticising Each Tiny Moment

I think that’s the very first place in which we falter.

We get so caught up in the idea that our entire life has to be this miraculous show-stopping show — this cinematic masterpiece, a box-office hit, a global sensation — that we forget that every movie is made scene by scene, take by take, line by line. We are overwhelmed with the notion that our life must be a Big Bang, that we forget that even the Big Bang inflated from a singularity. A tiny point. A moment.

“[The universe] swelled from a size smaller than an electron to nearly its current size within a tiny fraction of a second.” — Ker Than.

So we strive to be as mighty and as grande as we think we need to be. We overwork and under sleep. We worry more and breathe less. We bulk out our goals and shave off years of our life with the subsequent stress. We care more about the opinions of others than that of ourselves, and yet we’re the starring role here. We’re the protagonist, the main character in our life, we’re the ones the universe has brought a cute date along to come watch us with.

We think happiness has to be dipped in gold, hung in the sky and guiding shepherds to a newborn baby. We assume that if it’s not this big, chunky, tangible thing then it doesn’t have any worth. We think every moment of joy— if it’s not backlit by fairy-lights and flashes of paparazzi cameras — then it doesn’t count. So we disregard those moments, we dismiss them, we dart right past their beckoning embrace because we’re so sure there’s a much bigger, warmer one awaiting us on the horizon. And we do this so often that those moments have become nothing more than blurred faces on the pavement as we hurtle past. We’re so transfixed on the complex and hypothetical possibilities of the future, that we’re left desensitised to these tiny bursts of happiness, the small wins, the serendipitous aspects of life that are actually embedded into every aspect of our day.

And it’s this ignorance that makes us explode. Or fade away. Or get sucked into an existential black-hole. Or whatever else happens when our internal light goes out.

But these small moments matter. It’s these tiny things that “can make a big difference to our well-being and feelings of belonging.” Which is why we need to make a point of not only noticing the little things — but loving them up. Spot them, chase after them with a butterfly net, and grasp them in your palms. Name them, take them home to your nan, sew them onto your favourite bag. Screw the future and the past and the Bahamas and private jets and the MET gala and backstage passes to Coachella and lottery winners and best-selling authors and Picasso and sparkling white teeth and London penthouses. Screw all that. Find the happiness in the moment you’re in — and I promise you it’s there. See? See it there? Quick, it’s fast, hurry, grab a large cup and a piece of card! — and embrace it.

Most of us who have ever arrived at rock bottom, lingering in the gaps between happiness, are only there because we don’t quite know our worth, our value, our purpose. It’s that feeling of a life unfulfilled that can make us feel so empty. “[We] have no clear idea what the heck [we] are here for, and that doubt crawls inside of [us], takes root within [us] and it will make [our] life feel hollow.” But what if our purpose was simply to exist, here and now, and to love the world that’s unfolding around us? What if our purpose was to romanticise each moment we’re alive for, so intensely that Netflix couldn’t not commission it into a movie? We’re the director’s of our own life, the leading lady, the costume designer, the script-writer, the producer and the tech guy and the catering assistant.

It’s our duty — our responsibility — to make the very best cinematic masterpiece we possibly can.

Our purpose, it seems, is to romanticise every moment of our lives.

How to Romanticise the Moments

I wrote about this before. And I’m writing about it again. Because it’s so damn important and it’s so damn easy, too. It’s actually easier to see the world through rose-tinted glasses than through thick, gloomy fog. Less straining, more gasping in awe.

All you need to do is tune into the right channel. Be a little more aware of each individual word in this chapter of your life. Remember that you are made of universebits. Focus more on the present. Here’s a few things you could try:

  • Drink water from a wine glass.
  • Bathe in rose petals.
  • Side-eye an imaginary camera whenever something silly happens.
  • Personify your kettle. Talk to it whilst it boils.
  • Wear a sparkly dress to a blood test.
  • Stare at the stars. Imagine them staring back.
  • Tell your postman you think he’s cute, even if you don’t.
  • Record the sound of a lion roaring and a witch cackling. Set it to play every time you open your wardrobe.
  • Paint your staircase yellow.
  • Order a Chinese takeaway for breakfast. Sing your order down the phone.
  • Let your niece paint your skin. Tattoo it on.
  • Imagine you were born to be a hand model. Moisturise them accordingly.
  • Give all your worries a name. Each and every one of them. Then replace the names in the chorus of Mambo №5 and sing wildly, manically, freely.
  • Get your legs out for a change.
  • Look at the number of views on a Youtube video. Imagine all those other people sat in their room looking back through the screen and at you.
  • Buy green lipstick and wear it to the dentist.
  • That fold of your stomach that you hate so much? Grab it gently between your fingers and smile at it until you start to hate it a little less.
  • Shave half your face. Embody two different personalities.
  • Walk into a restaurant just to tip a server — then leave.
  • Smile at strangers. Compliment those who don’t smile back.
  • Make a Facebook page for your own heart. Then post sweet messages on it’s wall from your own account.
  • Light a candle when you’re on the loo (this is for practical purposes too, just fyi).
  • Message your old school bully and invite them for a coffee.
  • Live-tweet your entire day.
  • Wear your favourite outfit, prop your phone against the window and have a mini photo-shoot in your hallway. Upload all the pictures online.
  • Watch your favourite show with the subtitles on. Really pay attention.
  • Write a letter to the universe. Sleep with it beneath your pillow.
  • Write a letter to your neighbour. Post it.
  • Imagine an audience applauding your every move.
  • Ask that girl — you know, that girl — what she’s thinking about in this very moment. Listen to her as though it’s the last thing you’ll ever hear.
  • Set a timer for six minutes and do one really good thing (squeeze in a second if you can).
  • Make pottery and then laugh at it.
  • Make mistakes and then laugh at them.
  • Make friends and then laugh with them.
  • Make time — for all those things you love to do but just haven’t for some reason. In fact I’m telling you, 8pm to 9pm tomorrow night. No excuses. In that hour, you must be deliriously happy. Ya hear me?
  • Invent a new flavour of milkshake and present it to a fake audience. Make up a slogan on the spot.
  • Pretend your headache is actually a tiny interplanetary danceathon hosted on your brain. The winner’s will be announced soon. Hang in there.
  • Sponsor a butterfly.

Don’t you see?

In every instance at every point throughout any time in your life, there is a moment to be romanticised. Even the bad ones. Because life is lived not in the action sequences and the climaxes and the dramatic events. It’s lived scene by scene, line by line, the camera focused wholly on you, the main character, at all times. Whatever you turn your gaze to gets picked up in the frame, so shine a little light on it would ya?

Sure, life is fragile. It’s delicate and it’s vulnerable, but you know what? All the best things are. Even stars collapse eventually. Feathers flutter to the ground. Sand castles get washed to sea, babies grow into the elderly and movies come to an end. But nobody goes to the cinema just to watch the closing credits, right? We’re here for a showcase — a bloody good one at that. We’re here, armed with popcorn and wearing our favourite pastel converse, to have a good time. We’re here, not forever but for now and the now is all that ever matters anyway.

We are these ephemeral beings and our purpose is not to exist eternally — just to exist. And to do it well.

It’s so much simpler than you think. We all have so many blessings in our lives and the best way to show our gratitude for them is by truly seeing them. Just wake up each morning knowing that the universe is watching, that you’ve got scenes to film, you’ve got a life to lead. A beautiful one at that. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, my love — well, Camera 1, actually — and all eyes are on you.

So get out there and keeping living, live loudly, live romantically. Give the best damn performance of your life.

I’ll see you at the premiere (you won’t miss me. I’ll be wearing my bat onesie).

----

Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).

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About the Creator

em

I’m a writer, a storyteller, a lunatic. I imagine in a parallel universe I might be a caricaturist or a botanist or somewhere asleep on the moon — but here, I am a writer, turning moments into multiverses and making homes out of them.

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