voracious reader + full-time optimist
This year, instead of writing down resolutions, I decided on a few words and expressions that I would like to carry with me throughout the next twelve months. Besides having specific, more tangible goals, sometimes we need a quote, some sort of mental guidance to see us through our days, both good and bad ones.
Life is too short to fall for people who don’t love you loudly, or for relationships that don’t set fire to your soul. Our time on this earth is impermanent and in those years we must love fearlessly. The person you’re meant to be with will challenge you, will push you, will drive you crazy. Make you happy and confused and show you what real, complicated love is, all at the same time. The person you’re meant to be with will terrify you because they make you feel something greater than anything else. So this is what you need to know about love – you must always chase the person who scares you. Don’t settle for comfort. Love wildly.
The quote above appeared on Instagram account humanlovers back in August underneath a black and white photo that shows a couple in a passionate embrace, followed by countless similar photos with their own melodramatic captioning. [Who all these couples are and why they’re allowing third parties into their most cherished private moments, we shall never know.]
Imitation is the ultimate flattery, they say. In an attempt to imitate my brother’s approach to the things he loves, I decided to start embracing my guilty pleasures.In case you haven’t read my previous post on all the things I’ve learned from my somewhat younger but somehow wiser brother D, he is the kind of person that has the admirable quality of being shamelessly affectionate towards certain things (or people) without caring about other people’s opinions. So that’s what I aspire to do, embrace my guilty pleasures and share them openly; shifting them to the category ‘Things I Wholeheartedly Love (and That Make My Eyes Sparkle with Joy When I Talk About Them).
When I say guilty pleasures, I refer mainly to cultural artefacts of questionable quality. In a world where the world cool will one day become acceptable even for resumes and LinkedIn profiles, one has to watch/read/visit/listen/be informed about the right things so as to classify as cool. And this is, more or less, how the idea of guilty pleasures began. The term sums up all the things we enjoy but only in private so as not to be judged for our tastes.
