I Have a Habit of Romanticizing Everything
2 min read
I have a habit of romanticizing things.
Coffee in the morning.
Walking through a city with no particular destination.
A song playing at exactly the right moment.
Dinner somewhere beautiful.
A glass of wine at the end of a long day.
Even opening the bottle.
Although, admittedly, that last one has become less of a romantic ritual and more of a spectator sport.
Somewhere along the way, my inability to open a bottle of wine without creating unnecessary drama became part of my personal mythology.
I break corks.
Quite often.
Enough that the people who know me no longer simply watch me open a bottle. They wait.
There is a particular silence that happens when I pick up the corkscrew.
Everyone suddenly becomes very interested.
Will she do it?
Will the cork survive?
Will we actually drink the wine tonight?
Or are we about to witness another tiny domestic tragedy?
I can practically feel the anticipation.
And perhaps the funniest part is that I still insist on doing it myself.
Every... Single... Time.
Someone will inevitably offer to help, and there I am, holding onto the bottle with entirely unjustified confidence.
No, no. I’ve got this.
Historically, I have not, in fact, got this.
But that's beside the point.
Because lately I've been thinking that there is something rather lovely about trying anyway.
We become so focused on doing things correctly that sometimes we forget how much fun there is in being wonderfully imperfect at something.
Not everything needs to be mastered.
Some things can simply become stories.
The broken cork.
The coffee that went cold because the conversation was too good.
The restaurant you chose because the lights looked beautiful from the street.
The song you played three times because once wasn't enough.
The bottle everyone gathered around because apparently your previous failures have created expectations.
Maybe that's what romanticizing life really means to me.
I think I've always lived that way.
Give me an ordinary coffee and somehow I'll find a memory in it.
Give me a rainy afternoon and I'll find a soundtrack.
Give me a beautiful street and I'll wonder who once fell in love there.
Give me a bottle of wine and, well.
Apparently I'll give you a broken cork.
But I'll also give you a story.
And isn't that part of the fun?
There is so much pressure to rush through life. To get somewhere. To achieve something. To become better at everything.
I'm beginning to think there is another way to measure a good life.
By how much of it you actually notice.
How often you stop long enough to enjoy something insignificant.
How easily you laugh when things don't go according to plan.
How many ordinary moments you allow yourself to turn into something a little more beautiful than they needed to be.
Romanticize the coffee.
Wear the outfit you were saving.
Order dessert.
Play the song again.
Open the bottle yourself, even if everyone in the room has already started preparing for disaster.
And if the cork breaks?
Well... Try again.
There is something romantic about that too.
Maybe enjoying life was never about getting everything right.
Maybe it was simply about noticing the little things long enough for them to become something more.
I suppose I have a habit of making ordinary moments feel a little less ordinary.
Stay around long enough, and you might just find yourself in one of them 🤍
