The Worthwhile Trend of Romanticizing Your Life
Why do we feel the need to save life’s finer things for "special occasions"?
Attention sentimentalists: You know that feeling when you get a new, pretty notebook? Instead of cracking it open and pouring your heart out, you squirrel it away in a drawer to save it for something special.
Does this sound familiar? This is the Millennial version of what our Boomer moms did with their fine china, relegating their chicest, most expensive dishes and glassware to collect dust in the back cupboard because they should be saved for special occasions.
The trauma didn't end there. I even have vague childhood memories of conserving my very best Lisa Frank stickers (who remembers those?). Obviously, I couldn't squander them on run-of-the-mill arts and crafts projects. No, I needed to preserve them for some undetermined but definitely special future project, i.e., stow them in my cubby and forget about them forever.
Why Do We Save the Best Things for Later?
And by "save them for later," I mean bestow upon them some inexplicable undue value, such that you feel like you simply cannot waste these sacred items on an ordinary Tuesday but must stow them away for some unspecified day in the future that never ends up coming.
What are we waiting for? What prize do we think awaits us if we only wear our most expensive dress once a year or keep our great-grandmother's pearl earrings out of sight until we get invited to a dinner party we can deem just the right amount of "special"? Does this make us better somehow? Does it show we have more restraint? Better impulse control?
I'm not the only one posing the question.
In 1970, Stanford professor and psychologist Walter Mischel conducted the now somewhat infamous Stanford marshmallow experiment, where he sought to analyze one's tendency to delay gratification—or not. Here's the gist: each child in the study was given a choice to enjoy one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in 15 minutes. Upon follow-up, the study showed that the children who managed to wait alone in a room for 15 minutes without succumbing to the temptation to eat the sugary treat had "better life outcomes" like higher SAT scores, greater academic success, even better BMIs.
Spoiler: this study was debunked in 2018. Upon replication, the 21st-century researchers only achieved half of the original results. What was different? The 1970 study exclusively used Stanford's Bing Nursery School preschoolers, while the replication study sampled a more diverse population. Who could have guessed it? In hindsight, economic background seemed to be a much larger indicator of adult "successes" than the ability to delay marshmallow-eating.
The original marshmallow experiment stayed with me long after my high school psychology class closed the book on it. And even though Mischel's work was discredited, the inquisitive Carrie Bradshaw in me can't help but wonder: Why do we esteem the ability to delay gratification? After all, it's not just Mischel who has pointed to the virtues of being able to put off immediate pleasure for future rewards. A quick search on Instagram, Google, or your Internet blackhole of choice will spit out a litany of advice—from self-help gurus to financial advisors to psychologists—all lauding the value of willpower, self-control, self-discipline, and playing the long game.
Even if we choose to play the long game, can't we have fun along the way? Or must we only allow ourselves to have fun when a special occasion crops up to say we've earned it?
Stop Saving the Best for Last
Perhaps my subconscious is rebelling after having had to put so much on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, or maybe it's a pointed effort to undo the mind games Mischel may or may not have played on my impressionable adolescent mind, but there’s one thing I know for sure: I'm no longer saving the best for last.
Some visits ago, when tucking in at my parent's house, I remarked on the ornamental plates peeking out from behind the china cabinet's panes: "Those plates are pretty, Mom. Why don't we use them more often?"
And so we do. Today, the fine china may have more than a few chips, the gold rim is wearing off, the patterns have faded, and they've been subjected to far more cycles in the dishwasher than Martha Stewart would approve of—such are the repercussions of using one's "special plates" on the regular. But as my mom finally admitted: "What were we saving them for?"
With time, the sentimentalist in me has learned to be equally pragmatic with her notebooks.
Having wanted to be a writer since my earliest childhood scrawls, I've been the recipient of dozens of decorative notebooks over the years, the prettiest of which have been stashed away and all but embalmed for the afterlife after having been deemed too sacred for everyday to-do lists or random note-keeping. Instead, each awaits the elusive day when it hopes to begin bearing the first drafts of the Next Great American Novel.
Last year, when my husband came home from a trip to Istanbul, the beautiful floral notebook he gifted me went straight into my reserves. That is, until I hit the last page in the crappy spiral notepad I'd bought from the grocery store for my daily to-do lists.
I opened the cupboard where I kept my notebook stash and gently fingered the floral canvas. Do you mind if I use the gift you gave me for boring to-do lists? I texted my husband. Use it for whatever you want was something of his bewildered response, probably questioning his marriage to a crazy woman who overanalyzes banalities such as note-taking.
And so I did.
Every weekday began for the next six months with a hot (though not Turkish) coffee and a fresh page in my elegant Turkish notebook, a pleasantly pretty backdrop for the day's daily drudgery. When the last page had finally been satisfactorily scrawled over and ripped out, all that was left were the front and back covers. An empty canvas husk. On that day, I looked at it with more sentimentality than should be due to a thing as simple as a notebook while half a year flashed by me in a blurry nostalgia of life being lived.
And then I grabbed the next one in my special stash.
What If Every Day Were a Special Occasion?
Despite my previous neurotic reservations, I hadn't "wasted" the notebook. Its pages may have been filled with forgettable scribbles of "laundry," "draft outline," and "dentist," but those are the realities of most of my Mondays. Why shouldn't I be enjoying them? And why shouldn't I be using this pretty notebook to do it?
That's what you're supposed to do with things—not hide them away in a needlessly sacred cupboard—but use them. Use them in all their goodness up until the very last drop.
And so that's what I do.
The baby-blue patent leather block heels I bought in the spring? I don't save them for parties or date nights. I wear them to the grocery store if I please or even just down the block for Tuesday's stupid mental health walk. Because these events make up my life, it's time to start enjoying and romanticizing life to the fullest.
I'm no longer saving things for later or waiting to eat the marshmallow. Today is a special occasion because I say it is. (And why shouldn't it be?)