What’s your definition of romantic?

My mother, who was in most ways a very pragmatic person, had a guilty secret. She loved a romantic novel.

I have inherited her pragmatism but not her taste in books. Romance books are not my thing unless the romance is just one facet of an engaging narrative. Romancing, romantic gestures etc, just feel a little icky and coersive in specifically romantic novels. There is nearly always a power imbalance or jeopardy involved in the interactions between the people involved, there would be no story without such things.

However, as a woman whose glass is habitually half-full there must be a huge dose of my mothers love of romance residing in my soul, because life is sometimes shitty and yet I always try to find something positive in whatever situation.

The tidal pool was my destination for the morning dog walk and later I swam from the beach beside it.

For both visits it was rather a seaweedy experience.

But my glass-half-full, romantic head will only ever remember a beautiful morning walk and a delicious lunchtime swim, not the weed that made the pool unusable and stuck on my skin. Romance is seeing beyond irritation, embracing the moment and finding the golden nuggets in every experience. However mad that seems.

Not paying too much attention to the seaweed of life.

Harold S Kushner* emphasized the importance of finding good in every situation, stating, “If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul,”.

*

Soul nurturing, that is pretty romantic in my opinion.