Here’s why being a “hopeless romantic” isn’t as hopeless as you’d think.
I hate the term “hopeless romantic” mostly because of the stigma that surrounds it. When you think of a hopeless romantic, you probably think of someone “in love with love,” or “idealists, the sentimental dreamers, the imaginative and the fanciful” according to Urban Dictionary. Probably someone wide-eyed and needy, not in touch with the terrible reality that love sucks, right? I’ve been really trying to interpret this term. Why is it usually an insult to be called one? Has our modern society shunned this “type” of person? What is so wrong with being romantic?
I, for one, am a romantic. Let’s forget the stigma. I am in love with the way the waning summer sun warms my skin, but the chill of the wind brings the sweater weather of fall. I am in love with the feeling of getting out of the shower and into a bed of freshly cleaned sheets wearing freshly cleaned clothes. I am in love with getting to eat the specific food I have been craving for weeks. I am in love with laying my head on my mother’s chest like when I was a child, comforting me after being immersed in adulthood. I am in love with my world.
Being a hopeless romantic to me doesn’t just mean loving your lover unrealistically. It means loving the world somewhat unrealistically. I love that people are nicer and more complex than they initially seem. I love speaking my mind and having someone genuinely understand me. I love the glide of writing with a new ink pen. I love the tingling sensation I get after watching an inspiring film. I love to love. Forget the stigma.
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There’s a modern hopeless romantic, and that’s me. I know that there are many of us out there. We hope for a better world. We naively think that things will be OK. We may love a person that we know may not be good for us, but adore them anyway. Small things make us happy because the big things in life don’t make us smile too much. We learn to love what people disregard, because that is our only way of being content with real life. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.
And when it comes to real romantic love, we love passionately. I believe in the infatuation, “honeymoon” phase to be everlasting. I believe in writing letters, poems, films, paintings or any other ways of expressing the pure inspiration of love in different art forms. I believe in being two souls that are one, in a bond that exceeds friendship, family and societal structures like marriage. I believe that romantic love should be the person who is your partner in crime, in justice, in everything. This type of love doesn’t even need to be romantic. It’s a bond. Any other type of love would be so boring to me.
I have come to terms with being called a hopeless romantic because I interpret it in my own way. I am a modern hopeless romantic because I think love is in everything we do. Love goes beyond romance or kinship. Love to me is seeing a part of myself in something or someone else. It is inspiration. It is something beyond a mind. It is destiny.
Neelam Khan is a sophomore studying screenwriting and producing. What do you think of being a hopeless romantic? Email her at nk852613@ohio.edu.
