Living a life of whimsy.

The word ‘whimsy’ has been floating around a lot lately.

Another one of those random concepts that, seemingly overnight, takes the internet by storm and suddenly holds a hell of a lot more weight and meaning than it did a year ago. We’ve been doing this with language for as long as we can remember, but some other, more recent examples of this might be ‘aura,’ or ‘aesthetic,’ or even the concept of ‘self-care,’ depending on which digital era you want to look at.

And while sometimes the outcome of a trending word can feel rather… asinine (I’m sorry, Gen A.. I just don’t think ‘sigma’ is impactful enough to make waves in how we show up as humans!), ‘living a life of whimsy’ is one of these new internet concepts I can, however, fully stand behind.

But what exactly does that mean? To live a life of whimsy?

Well, in plain and simple terms, I take this notion as allowing yourself to play. 

To move through your otherwise ordinary day, making small, spontaneous choices just for the sake of fulfilling a sense of enjoyment. Things like:

• Buying pasta in a holiday shape when it’s just you you’re feeding
• Wearing your favorite perfume or cologne on a day spent at home.. no fancy outing
• Sliding down the slide at the park you pass every day on your commute back from work
• Leaving random, handwritten notes to the people in your life. Just because!

Now, as you begin to make such choices, you’ll be quick to realize they generally hold no real sense of practicality. And that’s exactly the point. 

But this is also where many of us struggle. 

Over time, we’ve been autodomesticated into a society where, as we advance from child to teenager to adult, we’re expected to leave behind some of the purest parts of ourselves in efforts to appear more responsible. More capable. More WORTHY… to the outside world. And yet, I believe this is where we’ve completely lost the plot.

You see, there is a great deal of magic in the ordinary that we tend to overlook when we’re so focused on upholding the particular image our Western culture has bestowed on us as “right.” 

When you live a life of whimsy, though, you start to loosen your grip on that rigidity and you find that a sense of enchantment takes over. Colors show up brighter. Food tastes better. The bird song you hear as you walk from your porch to your car that, let’s be real… you’ve probably learned to tune out at this point.. starts to sound so. much. sweeter. 

And that’s when you notice all the life happening before your eyes in ways you never did before.

For me, I really took note of these symptoms on a morning walk through my neighborhood.

And I will admit, I have been feeling a gradual flow of positivity making its way into my mindset day after day and week after week for some time now. But on this particular day, it hit me – an overwhelming wave of some of the simplest, yet truest love for this human experience.. completely uninfluenced by anything other than exactly what that is. 

I was genuinely high on life!

I had woken up earlier than expected. Accidental and hazy, because the world hadn’t fully started yet and neither had I. But instead of rolling over and forcing another hour of sleep, I pulled on my shoes and stepped outside to catch what was left of the sunrise.

And that’s when I looked up.

There, still hanging in a sky that was already mostly lit by the rising sun, was the moon. Big, bright, and beautiful, just as she always is. And in this moment, I realized the grandeur of the scene I was witnessing. The temporary period of time where both powerful entities just… shared the space. And I stopped walking to watch them, because it occurred to me that I had probably passed under that same overlap dozens of times before without ever once looking up to notice it.

That is whimsy. That desire to look up, which results in the tilt of the chin.

I kept walking, and somewhere in the middle of it came a man in a car. Probably on his way to work. And probably in some form of a time crunch.

But as I watched, his hazard lights flipped on, blinking on and off. On and off. On and off. He stopped right in the middle of the road, proceeded to step out, and before I could even make sense of what he might be doing, he scooped a turtle out of harm’s way, just to hop back in and drive on like nothing happened. 

I wanted to cry a little, honestly. Because even in the rush of a morning commute existed a man and a turtle and a split-second decision to actually give a damn.

I came home and made one of my high-protein breakfasts that I eat on rotation. It was steel cut oats cooked with egg whites that I have yet to master the art of avoiding full-on egg chunks forming. And I topped it with a medley of frozen tropical fruit and a generous drizzle of sweet golden honey. I ate this, understandably, polarizing bowl (egg chunks aren’t everyone’s jam) like it was something worth savoring. The cold burst of a berry against the warmth of the oats. The sweetness of the honey cutting through. Fuel, yes. But also, somehow, a gift.

And then I carried on to officially start my day by jumping in the shower. Except this time, with the commonly known luxury of hot water crashing down against your skin, I started… laughing???

Like, truly just giggling there alone, entirely vulnerable because I was caught off guard by how happy I felt. How wildly, embarrassingly good it is to be alive and awake and noticing things.

That’s what living a life of whimsy does to you.

The concept itself is simple, never asking you to overhaul your circumstances or wait for something extraordinary to arrive. Instead, it asks you to stop outsourcing your sense of wonder and start growing it from the inside. Because when you do, the universe rewards you!

Your life starts to transform, first in ways you’ll barely notice, like the way afternoon light moves across a room. You never see it happen. But at some point you look up and everything is bathed in gold.

That’s the thing about whimsy: it’s not a trend you adopt and then discard when the algorithm moves on. It’s a practice. A subtle, daily, deeply personal act of rebellion against the version of adulthood that told you wonder was something you had to leave behind in order to be taken seriously.

You don’t. You never did.