Romanticise your life! A sentiment suffocating social media; showing dreamy landscapes, soft glows from the sun, peaceful coffee shops or blurry beautiful people, aesthetically dressed under bright, ambient lights. Snapshots of perfection. Static, modelled perfection.
Although, I find these images quite inspiring, as an ideal, a positive mindset and seemingly preaching gratitude for life and its small joys, recently this trend has seemed questionable, as it also sets a bar of maintained perfection and beauty throughout life, with no room or value to the hardships of it. Do I now consider my life as less if I’m not able to be caught in a dreamy image or have an air of contentment? If I’m romanticising an ideal life, am I subduing the joys of the one I have?
Whilst social media or general society can encourage a desire for decadence and displays of fame and fortune, the romanticism ideal appears to subvert this; encouraging joy in simplicity, and friendship suspended in happy moments, yet perfectly timed for the camera. Is it possible then, that the inherent form of romanticising life to convey through images, to be seen and admired negates the self-contentment romanticism preaches? Does it pressurise perfection in a perhaps worse form – a need to appear grateful, interesting, and serene, without struggle? The trend is seemingly easily achievable and thus you must truly be below average if you don’t succeed in it.
Despite these considerations, together my friends and I have found inspiration in the trend and gone on trips and activities we may have never considered without it. Watching the sunset, painting mugs, admiring the sunrise in the freezing cold, drinking an overload of coffee, and loving every second – happy also that we actually succeeded in creating those idealised, advertised moments as if in a movie. We lived those snapshots of perfection. Therefore, can this trend be considered harmful if it also provides the opportunity for growth and enthusiasm for life?
Yet, inevitably life has hard, difficult, and painful moments. Moments not included in romanticising your life – as it only allows for contentment not struggle. The trend may be an effective tool to perhaps fool the mind into believing in its own happiness or achievement of a goal and hopefully get there. It does not account for just existing in your own emotions and difficult times. Unlike the movie it attempts to suggest life is, there’s no opportunity to simply pan to a rainy scene – life continues on and you have to live with the challenging moments, to feel them and solve them. You can only escape into the idealised, romanticised world for so long until reality comes calling. But, in struggle sometimes there is also a chance for relationships to be fortified in support of each other, and your own sense of self developed. The romanticising trend appears to ignore this crucial element of life to suggest we should also simply live in an ignorant pretence of bliss, not value our challenging and joyous times.
As always there is no easy conclusion to these questions, perhaps taking the trend as an inspiration for activities and not a guide for life is the best way to go? To enjoy what you want but maintain perspective of its shallowness?