Romanticise your life
Inertia — Nº197
It’s week one of the new year. The light spills across your desk, catching the steam rising from your cup—the one with the odd design you’ve grown to love. Your notes lie open with blank pages holding infinite possibilities. And in this quiet moment of intention, you dream of transformation.
As said in this post, when you’ve spent so long settling for less, daring to believe you deserve more joy can seem like a radical belief. You’ve spent the years watching other people’s highlight reels, wondering when your own life may enjoy the same pleasures. But magic doesn’t happen to you simply out of the blue—it’s something you learn to see.
Start with the morning. One of my own pillars of life is to learn to embrace the quiet of the AM. Wake up early and feel the silence and solitude if you’re alone. Notice how your bedroom window frames the sky like a dynamic painting. The way the light slowly and beautifully ramps up. Hear how your floorboards creak in familiar places during your usual route to the bathroom, like an old friend saying good morning. That first sip of coffee, with the taste of possibility, is never the same each time.
These are all scenes in the story of a true romantic. Someone who knows how delicate and fleeting happiness is. Someone who knows how precious life is and how little control they have over its future. You take all of your complications and idiosyncrasies and write songs about them. It’s hard work, but romance is about doing it anyway, making space for the love and hate in the same room, and never turning your back on the things that need you—including your own soul.
Take yourself on dates. Real ones, signed and painted across your calendar in bold strokes. Through them, you understand that romance is the love for presence and wonder. Spin alone in the kitchen, singing without limits. Dance alone at your favourite concert without needing anyone beside you. Or go and be absorbed in a solo exhibition in a hushed gallery. Let your heart break open while no one watches. “A summers day in the park for one”, you tell your colleagues. Watch how they smile with slight confusion in the corners of their mouths. Let them be confused.
Use the time to learn to love without permission or precedent. Pay exquisite attention to your own existence and remember the way you notice how the evening light turns your ordinary room into a cathedral, how your music encapsulates itself in your memories, and how the first bite of something can make your eyes close in private ecstasy.
You’re now learning that solitude isn’t the absence of love. It’s you, finally choosing yourself, over and over, in a world that’s forgotten how to be alone. Don’t let it sell you love in packages when it’s much wilder and more abundant than that. Gaze in the mirror and smile at what you see. Treat yourself to what makes your heart skip. Take yourself to the cinema and don’t mind that the seat next to you is empty. Get to know that you’re enough company, more than enough.
From here, you shine a quiet light that other people can’t help but notice. Whether you’re single or sharing a life with someone, this joy becomes your signature scent that people notice in every room you enter. It can help partners fall for each other with every new day when they witness one another able to dance in their own spotlight, lost in pleasure. They witness how the other has learned to hold their own with the tenderness of someone who can be loved completely. If you’re looking for love, this wholeness you’ve cultivated becomes a beacon to attract those who know how to cherish someone who has learned to cherish themselves. Either way, you discover that real love isn’t about filling empty spaces in each other. It’s about two complete universes choosing to dance together.
After that, collect your moments like seashells: the way your favourite barista remembers your order and draws a heart in the foam. The sudden breeze that refreshes your lungs during a walk. The song that comes on the radio at the right moment. They’re not coincidences.
And it isn’t about denial or forced positivity; some days will still feel heavy, graceless, ordinary, no matter what you do. But even then, you can light your favourite candle, turn on that playlist that makes you feel like the main character, and remind yourself that even the worst days have edges that catch the light if you turn them just right.
It’s no use waiting for life to begin anymore. No point waiting for someone to come along and make it interesting. It’s your story to write and perhaps the greatest one you’ll ever tell. Because it’s learning to love life as it is while drawing out all the ways you could make it even better. Yes, sometimes you’ll feel silly. Sometimes you’ll wonder if you’re overdoing it—but that’s exactly the point. Eventually, others come along and add a stroke of their favourite colours, too.
So here you are, back at your desk, planning your transformation. But maybe it’s not that at all. Perhaps it’s just you, finally giving yourself something that’s been there all along, waiting for you to notice.