Hi Remy! How do I find whimsy?
Hi babe, mwah!
You start an advice column of course! But then that leaves the question, what do you do when the first question you get for your advice column asks you how to find whimsy?
I have to admit, I kind of like how broad and simple your question is. But I think it also implies that you’re open to a lot of possibilities, or maybe I’m reading between the lines here. Maybe people don’t know what kinds of questions I’ll be good (or bad) at answering yet. Who knows? Who cares! You’re coming to me for advice here.
But it left me with a lot to think about, and I think I settled on a good train of thought. If I didn’t, you can just pretend I did and go on with your day. I wouldn’t let it bug you too much, it would be counterintuitive to your goal.
The first thing you must do to find whimsy is open yourself up to whimsy, it is easy to find yourself constantly feeling tied down and attached to something heavy, something that pulls you too close to the ground. The first thing you have to do to find whimsy is detach yourself from that, and while I’m putting that into words, it comes across as a little daunting, but I don’t mean for it to be daunting. I don’t think it needs to be daunting either, opening yourself up to whimsy means enjoying the little things, or at the very least not treating the little things with disdain.
A couple of months ago I went for a walk, in the middle of the walk it started absolutely pouring. It was heavy, it was hard, and it was unforgiving. I could have turned around, ended my walk early, but I didn’t. I kept going on my walk, and I was getting absolutely soaked. By the time I finally got back home, I was dripping wet, I looked like I crawled right out of a river. I was so soaked the only thing I could think of doing was take a shower.
Have you ever really stood in the rain before? The hard kind of rain, the rain that hurts a little bit when it hits you? Its very refreshing, there’s a kind of freeness to it. People talk about the rain a lot, getting caught in the rain especially, and I think it is easy to imagine it as being awful, or to imagine it as being enjoyable. That is the kind of thing I’m referring to when I mean opening yourself up to whimsy.
I’m not infallible in finding whimsy though, I have to say that I wasn’t the most thrilled for most of my walk in this rain. But I did make the decision to finish my walk, and because I made that decision, I also made the decision to enjoy it as much as I could.
There are easier ways to find whimsy though, but I do think whimsy, at least in the way I’m discussing it, kind of depends on being simple. The more complex it is, the more it strays from being whimsy. That doesn’t mean you can’t find enjoyment in the complex things, or in just complexity for complexity’s sake, I just don’t know if they fit the idea of being whimsy, and whimsy is what we’re talking about here. It is the dominant topic of conversation.
I think a great way to find whimsy is to break yourself out of routine. Routine can be a leader, if not the leader, in that heavy feeling I was talking about earlier, but I can’t say that routine is the concrete and end all be all device in that heavy feeling (I think that heavy feeling is something that builds upon being many things at once than just one thing to an extreme). Breaking yourself out of your routine doesn’t have to be something difficult either.
A thing I find great enjoyment in is fruit. Earlier this week I bought pomegranates, and I’ve eaten pomegranates before, but I realized that I had never actually cut a pomegranate myself before. I’ve always just gotten the seeds on their own, or I had found myself in a situation where the pomegranates were just already cut. So, I decided I was going to take my time and enjoy the whole experience. I cut into the pomegranate, sliced it into quarters, and picked the seeds out and ate them slowly. I think that made my day more whimsical than it would have otherwise. Cutting a pomegranate and taking the time to eat it isn’t something I do normally, but I felt better for doing it. Sometimes you just need to do something.
A leading enemy in your quest to find whimsy might be time, you might not feel that you have the time for whimsy. Sometimes you may have to make time for whimsy, and other times you may find whimsy making time for you. It kind of just depends on whatever situation you find yourself in, but it is important that you don’t lead yourself into frustration. A lot of situations would be whimsical if experienced in the right headspace and could lead to frustration if not, I’d say that frustration is another part of that heavy feeling I was discussing earlier.
Walks are a great way to make time for whimsy, but they are also a great way whimsy is making time for you. If you need to go from one place to another, walks are always a greatly preferable method, if possible, why not try and enjoy that? Stop and smell the flowers? Look at the clouds? Whimsy also may be making time for you in simple ways, simple little snippets of seeing things you enjoy, you just have to look for them. I saw someone feeding the squirrels while I was sitting outside on an especially bad day, and that made me feel so hopeful that I almost cried. What I’m trying to say is that whimsy requires observation, it requires yourself to be open to seeing things around you that otherwise you may ignore. To experience whimsy, you must open yourself to it, and that requires that you open yourself to the world around you.
If I’m talking about how to find whimsy, I think I must recommend a visit and a walk along a body of water. Any body of water will do; they all have their merits. A small river in a forest that slides smoothly under a bridge and over rocks has a different sort of feeling behind it than watching the freighters slink on by, but I’d recommend experiencing both in the same breath rather than denounce one over the other. If you can’t find a body of water, I’d recommend watching people walk on a busy street. I think the kind of slow atmosphere that’s required in activities like that is a great way to work up to finding a greater whimsy in the everyday. It makes you work on your observational skills, and I think a large part of whimsy is noticing what you enjoy.
You also can’t feel bad or silly about the little things you enjoy once you realize them, being self-conscious attaches to you and drags you down, it is a heavy feeling. And it is certainly part of that heavy feeling I keep mentioning. You just must allow yourself to exist, to take up space, to find the things you enjoy and allow yourself to enjoy them, and if you seek out the things you enjoy in the everyday, eventually you’ll find whimsy everywhere.
I believe that it is a very noble journey to find whimsy, and that it is also a very great question to ask if you aren’t sure how to go about it. I can’t say that it is as simple as saying that whimsy will find you, I wish I could because that would be a great way to sign off to you, and certainly would be a great sentiment to end on; but I think that if you search for whimsy, you will find it. But you do have to search for it, just hoping that you will chance upon it isn’t enough, and while it may not be a search that ever ends, it has to be a search that at the very least gets easier with time and practice.
Mwah,
Remy
Need advice? Send an email to remywritten@hotmail.com, and you could get an answer in a future installment.