To Romanticize Your Life, Ritualize It
In a life so short that it could end without warning, there should be no excuse for looking upon your own existence with indifference.
Every morning that you wake up is a gift. Every moment of consciousness is a gift. Even the simple fact that you are capable of assigning meaning to your experiences, of creating beauty from ordinary circumstances, is a gift. Yet so many people move through their lives as though living were an obstacle to overcome rather than an experience to inhabit.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time waiting for life to begin.
We wait for the vacation, the wedding, the promotion, the dinner reservation…
We wait for Friday.
We wait for summer.
We wait for the next chapter.
In the meantime, entire portions of our lives are discarded as insignificant. They are treated as things to get through, things to rush through, things to complete before the real moments arrive. I think this is one of the greatest mistakes a person can make.
The key to romanticizing your life is not found in extraordinary experiences. It is not found in travel, grand gestures, or dramatic reinventions. It is found in the moments that you have already decided do not matter.
Most people divide their lives into what I would call main moments and supporting moments. The main moments are the things we anticipate. They are the events circled on the calendar. They are the experiences we build up in our minds and look forward to for weeks or months. The supporting moments are everything else. Making breakfast. Taking a shower. Getting dressed. Reading before bed. Brewing coffee. Choosing a perfume. Watering plants. Folding linen napkins. Walking to the market.
The tragedy is that people treat these supporting moments as if they exist only to serve the main moments.
Consider something as simple as preparing for a dinner party. Most people view the evening itself as the event and everything that precedes it as an inconvenience. The shower, the skincare, the music playing in the background while they get dressed, the process of selecting jewelry, steaming a dress, pouring a glass of wine while doing their makeup…these things are rushed through because they are seen merely as preparation.
But what if that understanding is completely backward?
What if the preparation is not separate from the experience?
What if it is part of the experience?
In fact, I would go even further than that. I would argue that these so-called supporting moments are not supporting moments at all.
They are rituals.
And rituals deserve reverence.
A ritual is not simply a task repeated over time. A ritual is an action that has been elevated through attention. It is a deliberate act that acknowledges the significance of something. Religious traditions understand this intuitively. There is a reason ceremonies exist. There is a reason sacred objects exist. There is a reason people move carefully through ritualized spaces and ritualized actions. Ritual slows us down. It forces us to pay attention. It reminds us that certain moments deserve our respect.
The same principle applies to everyday life.
Getting ready for a dinner party should feel ceremonial. Making tea should feel ceremonial. Setting the table should feel ceremonial. Reading before bed should feel ceremonial. These moments are not obstacles standing between you and life. They are life.
The problem is that modern people have become obsessed with efficiency. We are constantly attempting to eliminate friction, reduce time, optimize routines, and compress experiences into the smallest amount of space possible. We want the fastest route, the quickest solution, the shortest process, the most convenient option.
In doing so, we accidentally remove much of what makes life meaningful.
We have become so concerned with arriving that we no longer appreciate preparation.
There is a reason afternoon tea feels romantic.
Objectively speaking, it is one of the least efficient ways imaginable to consume a beverage. It takes longer. It requires more preparation. There are additional objects involved. There is ceremony where none strictly needs to exist.
And yet that is precisely why it feels special.
The tea is not the point. The point is the ritual, anticipation, attention, and beauty.
Every ritual is ultimately an act of respect. It is a way of communicating that something matters enough to deserve your full attention. When you rush through getting ready for an evening out, you diminish the experience before it even begins. When you allow yourself time to enjoy the preparation, however, the experience becomes richer. The anticipation deepens. The significance grows. You begin participating in the beauty of the event long before you arrive.
This is why I believe that one of the most important ingredients in a romantic life is time.
Time should be holy.
Not productive. Not optimized. Not conquered.
Holy.
Whenever people talk about romanticizing their lives, they often focus on aesthetics. They focus on candles, flowers, beautiful clothing, expensive hotels, and charming cafés. These things can certainly contribute to a beautiful life, but they are not the foundation of one.
The foundation is time. A person cannot romanticize their life while rushing through it. Beauty requires attention, and attention requires time.
The dreamlike quality that people often associate with a romantic life is impossible to achieve when every hour is scheduled to capacity. We have become convinced that getting the most out of life means fitting as many experiences as possible into a day. The result is that every experience becomes less memorable than the one before it. The mind becomes overwhelmed with stimuli. Details blur together. Moments lose their distinction.
Beauty lives in details, and details require space.
If you want your life to feel richer, slower, and more meaningful, the solution is often not to do more. It is to do less and experience it more fully.
Ritual is one of the ideas that eventually led to the creation of Solenne.
If beauty is cultivated through repetition, then the objects we return to every day matter. The first Solenne ritual is currently in development and will be released in limited quantities.
Join the waiting list to be among the first invited into the ritual.