Let’s Be Romantics

Romantics come in two types: you’ve got capital-R Romantics—the 19-Century social and artistic visionaries who liked communing with trees—and lower-case-r romantics, singing “Someday My Prince Will Come” and gazing longingly out the window.

Pedants will occasionally skewer you for mixing the two meanings together, but don’t let it bother you. Today, we’re talking about a basic, elemental romanticism that all of the specific romanticisms so neatly boxed up by the pedants have in common.

Here’s our definition: romanticism is valuing things more highly than a merely practical assessment warrants.

The capital-R Romantic is doing this all the time. Why else does he haunt every grove with dryads and every stream with naiads? His are not purposeless enchantments; he is contending that Nature (his capitalization) is worth more than the price of her lumber or hydroelectric potential of her currents.

The lower-case-r romantic fulfils our definition too. For what is the practical value of some-day-my-prince-will-come romance? Having a partner might have practical value—at least they can chip in on the rent—but you don’t need your pupils to turn heart-shaped whenever you see someone to get the practical upsides of having a teammate. What the romantic longs for is the poofy, uncalculated, superfluous side of love.

Our definition also makes sense of the more negative connotations of romanticism. In our scheme, the verb “romanticize” would mean to become fixated on the extra-practical value of things to the exclusion of the practical value. For instance, if you romanticize the Age of Exploration, you might think plenty about the intangible glory of embarking, intrepid and white-sailed, to plant flags on undiscovered beaches—without thinking much about scurvy, slavery, colonialism, or smallpox.

As that example shows, the danger of romanticism is that it can get between you and reality; your glasses can become so rose-tinted they’re opaque. But romanticism also has the power to do the opposite, to put us better in touch with reality. Let me explain how.

In our consumerist age, we are ever encouraged to trade away life for convenience. One example:

Resting on millions of kitchen countertops are so-called “beverage brewing systems,” new-fangled machines for making coffee. Coffee—that manful African bean which for generations has been farmed, roasted, ground, brewed, and drunk with such care and respect; whose subtleties of flavor and mouthfeel could dazzle the most pretentious sommelier; under whose auspices great meeting places were erected; the liquid courage of heroes; the fuming fuel of art movements; the drink of first dates, first impressions, and first responders; that indispensable and irresponsible beverage—this noble plant has been sealed in a plastic single-serving spaceship-shaped capsule so that the consumer need not so much as glimpse its grounds. With the application of hot water to this capsule by means of the beverage brewing system, an energizing facsimile of well-brewed coffee can be produced in mere seconds. Thus, caffeine molecules are bonded to eager adenosine receptors with as little fuss as possible. Likely the most convenient delivery vehicle possible, until science solves the problem of the portable caffeine IV drip.

(Given the popularity of these machines, I want to disclaim any intent to insult you personally, dear reader, or your choice of caffeinated beverage. All of my barbs are aimed at Intangible Societal Forces, I promise!)

Now maybe coffee doesn’t fire your imagination. I don’t drink it myself; it makes me jitter. But substitute something you do care about—be it coin collecting, French literature, or city planning—and imagine it ruthlessly mined for practical value until none of the impractical value is left. If you feel something would be lost, however slight, you’re a little bit of a romantic.

And you’re the more connected with reality for that.

Reality is a profound and many-faced thing burgeoning with superfluity. Practicality requires shaving and trimming and pruning this multifariousness until we can focus on one or two crucial upshots. If romanticism is a pair of rose-tinted glasses, practicality is a pair of blinders. For getting things done, the blinders can be terribly helpful. Action asks for focus. But if you only care about getting things done—if you’re always wearing blinders—then you’ll wind up reducing everything in your life to K-Cup coffee.

It’s only the romantic impulse to care about more than merely getting things done that that prompts us to pull the blinders off and see the everything reliably bubbling all around us.

People on the internet tell me, portentously, that we’re living through a “crisis of meaning.” The story goes that, without big shared stories to give us a sense of purpose, we’re all shooting off at random like electrons in a physics textbook illustration, spending our energies bouncing between things that ultimately leave us unfulfilled.

I don’t know how prevalent this crisis of meaning really is, but certainly at least some folks really struggle with it. (If that’s you, thanks for spending some of your doomscrolling time with me. I appreciate it.)

Now, you can see how out-of-control practicality would fuel these feelings of anomie. As you ruthlessly cut the troublesome little oblong pleasures out of your life, replacing effortful real things with effortless low-calorie substitutes, you’re actually putting more and more pressure on yourself to have an overarching life goal. See, for someone who finds joy in the none-too-convenient act of brewing their morning coffee, that joy might be one small source of meaning in their life. But what about for someone who has had morning coffee reduced to convenience? They aren’t after the feeling of brewing coffee; they’re implicitly aiming at something else. But what? What valuable thing does the extra convenience help you obtain? As more and more of your life becomes built for convenience, the question becomes more and more urgent. You can have your groceries delivered, your shirts wrinkle-proofed, and your news summarized; but what are you using all of that convenience for?

Practicality is about the means, not the ends. If you let practicality shoulder romanticism aside entirely, you’ll wind up with lots of means and nothing to point them towards. At best, you’ll feel adrift. At worst, you’ll be tempted to adopt some world-flattening ideology as your source of meaning and bend everything you do into serving that.

But there’s a better way. The marketing teams behind the big ideologies want you to believe that the only way to have a sense of purpose is to get it all from one place. But the romantic knows that life is full of little meaningful things. The bashful tremble of a leaf touched by the wind, the sound of a tea kettle cantering toward a boil, the mineral smell of rain on pavement, the incandescent taste of wine paired with conversation. None of these things is big enough to be your life’s goal. But maybe you don’t need a single life’s goal. Like crowdsurfers, we are borne aloft by many hands.

I believe that appreciating the incredible excess of reality is at the heart of happiness. If you agree, then we only have one choice. In spite of the dangers, we’re going to have to be a little bit romantic.