Romanticize Part II

 I woke up with this blog in my mind, so I am putting it down on paper.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?  I guess I should lead this off with a notice that this is not for kids.  WHY?  We want them to maintain the magic of Christmas.  We want them to believe, EVEN AFTER we learned harsh truths about it.  Why?  We see the value of innocence and the beauty of belief, and we see the joy and drive that it gives the kids to believe it. We also believe in self fulfilling prophecy.  We believe that if you believe something, good or bad, your actions will help to bring it about.

We use the term "romanticize" often in a negative way to refer to someone that is seeing things through "rose colored lenses" or the haze of emotions.  Then, society goes about telling you or them how it "really is" and that they should use their mind to see the facts about things.  This is done to protect them by people that were disappointed that their romantic Santa didn't give them their gift.  But... then... they and we all watch romantic films, read romantic books, and we tell our kids to believe in romance, as well.

We romanticize many things, in fact.  We believe that our work has our interests at heart.  We believe we can make a difference in the lives of others.  We believe that our pet loves us and not our feeding of them.  We believe our government wants to protect and prosper us.  We believe our kids will learn from our lessons and change the world.  Are they true?  Often, not.  But, believing it is a gift we give ourselves, and it might inspire a positive change, even if just in us.

It's easy to pick apart things and find reasons why things might not work, and that might be the reality, often.  But, would you rather spend that time finding fault and being depressed or seeing life as an adventure that is not written and enjoy the journey and magic of the potential.  As for me, I decorate my apartment each Christmas, and I choose to romanticize romance, because without doing that, it's just a couple people spending time with each other.