Walt Whitman used his poem “This is What You Shall Do,” published the same year in 1855, to preface his celebrated poetry collection “Leaves of Grass”.
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school, or church, or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem…”
“Your flesh shall be a great poem.”
It’s a beautiful concept, the idea that we, for all our imperfection, all our faults, are art. That verse flows from our lips like song, goodness exuding from our hearts like liquid gold. That the greatest masterpiece is found not in a museum or in an ancient temple, but in the warmth of a smile, in the flutter of heartbeat upon seeing someone you love, the radiance of hair glowing under the sun, lit from within. And what Whitman describes encapsulates a concept made popular through, of all things, social media: romanticizing one’s life.
In short, romanticization is the embellishment of mortality.
It is the rose-tinted perception of every banal struggle, every trite joy, every pedestrian facet of what it means to be human, so that we move through life with an air of intentionality— to not simply exist, but to experience.
Social media has brought with it a multitude of dangers, ranging from the disturbingly normalized narcissism permeating every aspect of influencer culture, to the crippling social isolation many of our generation, and even those outside of it, wrestle with as a result.
But I believe romanticization is one of the internet’s kinder offspring. Is it a little selfish to view yourself as the main character in a story to which everyone else you encounter is a mere accessory? To exaggerate every emotion you experience, simply because you are the one experiencing them? Undoubtedly.
But we live in a world plagued by disappointment, a world in which headlines scream of violence, hatred and the perpetual war between one subjective good, and one subjective evil. If romanticization is the reason you can eclipse all that pain with all that pleasure, to not only appreciate but to actively seek out the hidden beauty and small kindnesses in life, who am I to stop you? Just as dancing or knitting may be the quintessential escape from reality to one individual, while writing or sprinting may serve that purpose to another, dreaming can very well be that anchor for someone else; the moor securing them between fantasy and reality so that they do not fall too deep into either one. And if that’s you, if romanticizing your life, dreaming of a better one, is the only thing holding you fast while your sanity hangs in the balance, then dream on, I say.
Dream on.