The Art of Romanticising The Mundane Everyday
Oldies are playing in another room while the simple pleasures of the everyday become mindful rituals rather than back-breaking chores.
You’re awoken by the soft trills of the rainforest [ringtone], you come to your senses as you sip lemon tea from vintage china, and step out of a steamy shower to lather your body in rich oils and creams; the day has begun. You may live in a house share on a random suburban street, but, for the romantic, this is how every average mid-week morning should start.
A romantic life; a life fit for the poets and philosophers of old. Not a life necessarily punctuated by seeking out love and romance from others, but from finding beauty and appreciation from within. Just as The Romantic Period advertised in the late 1700s, modern romantics glorify the ordinary and see the significance in the mundane everyday. Romanticising your life is the art of living deeply and fully in the present, enjoying the current moment, and seeing beauty and magic in the commonplace.
A cottagecore morning routine follows one influencer as she basks in the morning sun, nibbles on a fresh croissant at a table filled with flowers and spritzes her pink duvet with lemon-scented perfume. Elsewhere on TikTok, videos show off fruit-topped-toast, stunning beach views and flower-filled picnics while gratitude mantras encourage you to ‘romanticise your life’.
Searching #romanticiseyourlife, as over a billion people have, on TikTok will bring up a myriad of content. In the wider craze, three subgenres have emerged as part of the modern Romantic Movement. The first, centering around the classic ideal of ‘main character energy’, boasts travel-blog-style edits of beautiful places, sunsets, and typical holiday fun. The second focuses on one of TikTok’s favourite ‘cores’, cottagecore, with women in prairie dresses and bonnets baking sourdough and plating up afternoon tea on antique crockery and floral tablecloths.
While both are exquisitely beautiful, and slightly too aspirational, the most popular subgenre features videos detailing simple, little things, which cost little or no money, that can enhance your everyday life. Simple luxuries like having houseplants, reading by candlelight, and listening to Clairo, for example. Cutting your strawberries into heart shapes, buying yourself flowers, and reading in the bath. The key, according to these videos, is to focus on details you would usually overlook — like preparing food or bathing — and choose instead to find beauty in them, elevate them to become nicer things in your life.
Just as always, rightly, comes into question on social media, these videos may spark controversy around their authenticity. Whether you’re watching someone romanticise their life, or you yourself are partaking in the small, hyper-specific experiences suggested to do so, you might ask, ‘Is this a real experience or simply a curated one?’ Are you really buying yourself flowers because your life is romantic and you find buying them for yourself enjoyable, or are you actually attempting to curate a romantic life in place of your unromantic one?
Whatever the answer, there’s a deeper question we should be asking. Why do we place a negative connotation on the latter? The word ‘curated’ has turned into a bit of a dirty term thanks to the social media age. People ‘curate’ a false depiction online by sharing only their happiest moments, over-priced Depop stores can charge higher fees for thrifted items because they’ve ‘curated’ the selection of items, the media ‘curates’ a false image of someone based on limited reports. We can see the flaws in this type of curation but is it always that bad?
You can decide for yourself, but I would argue that in curating real life experiences in the name of romanticism, we are simply aiming to improve our lived experience, not necessarily the view other people have on our lived experience. Is that a bad thing? What’s the harm if you enjoy taking a bath more when you’ve got candles burning, houseplants in view and an ‘oldies playing in another room’ Youtube compilation on? Curating that type of experience to ensure it’s more enjoyable transforms the humdrum of life into a selection of more meaningful moments that can have a real impact in changing our world view.
The concept of romanticising your life is no new ideal. It first became popular as part of the artistic, literary, musical and intellectual Romantic Movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. But the phrase ‘romanticise your life’ more recently took off in the modern world thanks to the pandemic.
Romantics took to social media in the grimmest months of the pandemic to find some sort of happiness and appreciation in time so devoid of these ideals. As people across the globe collectively faced a period of true turmoil, where we were brought back to the bare basics of human necessity, the New Romantic Period asked them to appreciate the simple moments, to be thankful and appreciative of the daily rituals we could partake in and live out those with intention, not with wishes for more. The idea promised that though we could not physically change what was happening, we could change our perception of and reaction to it, offering control in such uncontrollable times.
Call it looking for silver linings or wearing rose-coloured glasses, but this inner optimistic outlook is really all the romantics are advertising. The whole point is to seek out and create positivity with the aim to actively try and see the world in a better light.
Romanticism generally focuses on individualism and individual emotion, asking people to do what makes them feel good. It’s not about ignoring the world’s big issues, or skipping over the tough conversations you need to have, it’s about going into things with a positive outlook.
Again, you can’t control everything in your life, but romantics say you do have control of how you view your situation. If you’ve had a tough day at work, instead of complaining and dwelling on the fact, you can run yourself a hot bath and spend the evening relaxing with a glass of wine. It’s not going to change that you’ve had a bad day, but it can ease the impact it has on you. Or, if you’re dreading the overwhelming task of cleaning your living space, remind yourself that you deserve to live in a clean, healthy home and that, by cleaning, you’re appreciating yourself enough to let yourself live in that environment.
It sounds a bit frivolous and, I hope I don’t have to point this out, but you’re not going to cure depression or banish anxiety by romanticising your life. Mental health struggles cannot be loved away, but Romanticism isn’t trying to do that. It’s saying, as has been backed by science, that positivity and an optimistic outlook can build resilience, which in turn can help you live a longer, healthier life. A 2017 study looking at 70,000 women over an eight-year period found that those who had higher levels of optimism were less likely to die of major causes of death (such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and infection) than those who weren’t as optimistic.
Does that mean you should quit your job, book a holiday and run away from all of your problems to see the sunset on the other side of the world? If you want. But you’d be missing the point. Unlike the coveted ‘That Girl’ aesthetic that promotes one ‘works for all’ path to wellbeing and happiness, romanticising your life is about finding what brings you happiness and doing that in small ways every single day to take care of yourself. In one of the best examples of romanticism around, one Reddit commenter even found joy washing coffee pots at work; “After putting a little soap in the pot, I gently squeeze the bottle to blow bubbles out. I love bubbles.”
The truth is we all feel discontent with our lives sometimes. Romanticism isn’t trying to stop that but it is offering a balm for the wound. Without doing anything particularly extraordinary, the most mundane and monotonous tasks can become enjoyable. Looking for reasons to smile, things to enjoy, and acts to appreciate can go a long way in making positive thinking the subconscious default. Romanticising your life is not going to cure all of your woes, but it might make the everyday burdens a bit lighter.
