I read all kinds of pieces online concerning "what's it like to......." What's it like to have autism? What's it like to live on $10 per day? What's it like to wear heels for 16 hours and then come home and cook dinner and rock babies? But have you folks ever considered us: the hopeless romantics? Have you ever wondered what it's like to be us?
I'm thinking the #2 bullet point is the one we should be focusing on for today's lesson. Do us hopeless romantics live in an idealized view of reality? Well, of course! We are the daydreamers, the movie cryers, the poetry readers, the just-listen-to-the-words while we stop all conversation and turn up the adult contempo radio station. That's us. I feel bad for you, son. (My husband, I mean.)
Last night there was a blue moon-blood moon-super moon-wiki moon-moon over Parador. What exactly does this do to the hopeless romantic? Well, if you're me, it means you got up and looked out the window at about 4:15 and imagined yourself as Cher in "Moonstruck" while your husband mumbled unintelligibly from the bed. It means you imagined Audrey Hepburn strumming her guitar and singing "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". It means you imagined the aboriginal hunter using the bright moon to guide his way home to his wife and children on the plains. It means you imagined everyone else was standing and looking up at the moon with the same feeling of nostalgia and lovesick grief that only us romantics can understand. Yeah, it was 4:15. Yeah, we did that.
Being a hopeless romantic means you really can't hear Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" without getting a tinge teary-eyed. It means you love The Cure but sometimes needs a break from "Pictures of You" and "Just Like Heaven" is only played at the most sacred of moments. It means you have a cache of love songs that only your sister and closet friends even know about: Karen Carpenter, Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, Ben Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright......you get the picture.
Being a hopeless romantic means you can't watch the episode of "Friends" when Ross and Rachel break up. Once was quite enough. It means you have to ask yourself if you're emotionally strong enough to sit down and watch an episode of "This is Us". Believe me when I tell you a binge of that show is out of the question for hopeless romantics. It means you know Daniel Day-Lewis intimately and no one can ever tell you that Rhett Butler was a bad guy.
What can I say to you non-hopeless romantics except to say that it may be best not to try to understand us, just love us. That's what we're doing to you anyway. And do I think all this sounds a little too overwrought and precious? Maybe so. But after all, I didn't say this was the club of die-hard-concrete-conservative-algebra-physics-Stephen Hawking lovers. Those guys meet every other month on Thursdays. And us hopeless romantics will be home watching "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" for the 96th time.
ro·man·tic
rōˈman(t)ik/
adjective
adjective: romantic; adjective: Romantic
- 1.conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.
"a romantic candlelit dinner"synonyms: loving, amorous, passionate, tender, affectionate;
informallovey-dovey"he's so romantic"- (of a person) readily demonstrating feelings of love.
"he's very handsome, and so romantic" - relating to love or to sexual relationships.
"after their romantic relationship ended they became great friends"synonyms: sentimental, mawkish, saccharine, syrupy; More
informalmushy, schmaltzy, gooey, treacly, cheesy, corny, sappy, soppy, cornball
"the book was a bit too romantic for my tastes"antonyms: unsentimental, gritty
- 2.of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.
"a romantic attitude toward the past"synonyms: idyllic, picturesque, fairy-tale; More
beautiful, lovely, charming, pretty
"a romantic setting"idealistic, idealized, romanticized, unrealistic, fanciful, impractical;head-in-the-clouds, starry-eyed, optimistic, hopeful, visionary, utopian, fairy-tale"romantic notions of life in rural communities"antonyms: practical, realistic - 3.relating to or denoting the artistic and literary movement of Romanticism.
"the Romantic tradition"
I'm thinking the #2 bullet point is the one we should be focusing on for today's lesson. Do us hopeless romantics live in an idealized view of reality? Well, of course! We are the daydreamers, the movie cryers, the poetry readers, the just-listen-to-the-words while we stop all conversation and turn up the adult contempo radio station. That's us. I feel bad for you, son. (My husband, I mean.)
Last night there was a blue moon-blood moon-super moon-wiki moon-moon over Parador. What exactly does this do to the hopeless romantic? Well, if you're me, it means you got up and looked out the window at about 4:15 and imagined yourself as Cher in "Moonstruck" while your husband mumbled unintelligibly from the bed. It means you imagined Audrey Hepburn strumming her guitar and singing "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". It means you imagined the aboriginal hunter using the bright moon to guide his way home to his wife and children on the plains. It means you imagined everyone else was standing and looking up at the moon with the same feeling of nostalgia and lovesick grief that only us romantics can understand. Yeah, it was 4:15. Yeah, we did that.
Being a hopeless romantic means you really can't hear Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" without getting a tinge teary-eyed. It means you love The Cure but sometimes needs a break from "Pictures of You" and "Just Like Heaven" is only played at the most sacred of moments. It means you have a cache of love songs that only your sister and closet friends even know about: Karen Carpenter, Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, Ben Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright......you get the picture.
Being a hopeless romantic means you can't watch the episode of "Friends" when Ross and Rachel break up. Once was quite enough. It means you have to ask yourself if you're emotionally strong enough to sit down and watch an episode of "This is Us". Believe me when I tell you a binge of that show is out of the question for hopeless romantics. It means you know Daniel Day-Lewis intimately and no one can ever tell you that Rhett Butler was a bad guy.
What can I say to you non-hopeless romantics except to say that it may be best not to try to understand us, just love us. That's what we're doing to you anyway. And do I think all this sounds a little too overwrought and precious? Maybe so. But after all, I didn't say this was the club of die-hard-concrete-conservative-algebra-physics-Stephen Hawking lovers. Those guys meet every other month on Thursdays. And us hopeless romantics will be home watching "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" for the 96th time.