Whimsy Hunting

By Sophia Memon

Whimsy has been a trend lately: injecting pieces of joy into the most mundane of

places and things. One of my friends has been wearing her favorite fancy dresses to

coffeeshops just to make getting a latte feel a bit more exciting, and another has

been making playlists for every possible circumstance, accompanying her life with a

movie-like soundtrack.

While there’s often a way to make your own happiness and add light into life,

sometimes even searching for happiness feels like too heavy of a task. So I’ve been

whimsy hunting—merely noticing the tiny things that happen and letting that be

enough.

These are the kind of moments that we don’t have to make and that we don’t have

to search for-–they will just happen, and the only difference is whether or not we

decide to allow them to become sources of quiet joy, or whether we just let them be

quiet.

I told a serious friend of ours in the winter that it seemed like he’d “lost his whimsy” in

the midst of the cold finals season. Without a second thought, he stood up, dropped

his textbook, and began skipping wildly in circles like a little kid. So, it seems

somehow, that whimsy hunting is as simple as deciding to hunt whimsy, whether

through a nice frolic in the library or tying bows to the ends of your hair.

Here are 11 moments of whimsy that have found me in the past week alone.

Breathless laughter

If I could be anywhere right now, I’d be doubled-over laughing on the kitchen floor.

At 6AM I laughed myself to tears, surrounded by people cackling even louder than

me over a mango peel and water spilling. I couldn’t even begin to explain what was

so funny in that moment, but I’d relive it over and over again in a heartbeat. I realize

I’m smiling every time the memory comes to mind now.

Random compliments

A woman downtown complimented my skirt on Wednesday before disappearing

into the sea of speeding cars and red lights. A friend of a friend told me I was like

sunshine randomly over dinner. My best friend liked my earrings so I took them off

and gave them to her; people see you, and sometimes you get to be the joy and

whimsy that they notice.

The scent of pasta cooking

Because sometimes you’re alone at the stove and music is playing in the

background, and sometimes everyone you love is rushing around with cheese and

plates and shared history, but no matter what, right now the air smells like starch

and no matter what, there will be pasta on your plate soon.

That one thing you always wanted as a child

When I was little, I really wanted to know how to make tea. And now, whenever it’s

raining outside, or I have a really good book to read, or it’s the dead of night and the

rest of the world has gone to sleep, I can set the kettle to boil and I can make the tea

my mom has always made to welcome friends inside. Sometimes, when I least

expect it, I realize that the simple life I dreamed of as a kid is my reality now.

Meeting the right stranger

The woman at the Metra station who told me with such genuine disappointment

that there was no chance I’d make it to the right platform in time for the train, the

man who asked the conductor to wait when he saw me running through the station,

and the way they both cheered when I made it at the last possible second. I’ll most

likely never see them again, but they chose to be kind to me anyways.

The feeling of a new song

The first time I heard my favorite song, I put it on my Spotify queue 37 times and it

played in the background for 129 and a half minutes while I did dishes and laundry

and homework. I danced the whole time. I still love that song, but I don’t feel it the

way I did that first day. I can’t wait for that energy to pulse through me again when I

hear a snippet of something new on the radio.

Good hair days

Self explanatory. Especially when you think of your most recent bad hair day, this is

absolutely a pocket of joy.

Watching someone you love watch something you love

I’ve watched Gilmore Girls seven times, and watching my best friends fall in love with

Lorelai and hate Dean the way I always have makes me feel alive. That moment, that

knowing glance of, “I know you so well that I knew you’d love this,” makes me realize

how well I actually do know the people I share my life with.

Good candid photos

When the sun hits the lake at just the right angle or a bird flies by at precisely the

right second, the joy of moments in time that could not possibly be captured in film

comes as close to that as they possibly can. My favorite photos are the ones of my

friends laughing because the joke will never be as funny when we retell it, but we’ll

start cackling without being able to explain why every time we see the shot.

When it’s just right

Goldilocks gets it, with the just right chair and just right porridge. When the

tomatoes are just firm enough for salad and just ripe enough for spaghetti, when you

walk outside without checking the weather and your sweater is perfectly light,

sometimes it feels like everything in the universe had to come together in order to

tailor itself to you, if just for a fleeting moment. This quiet perfection of

unnoticeability feels magical when I let myself see it.

The fact that my phone alarm isn’t ringing right now

You’re probably not running down the block trying to catch the train at this second.

Maybe when you woke up this morning, you felt wide awake and turned off your

alarm before it even began to blare. Or maybe you woke up exhausted only to realize

it was 4am and that you could go back to sleep without a second thought. Perhaps

you’re running late and it turns out that the person you’re meeting is too, so you’re

both still going to be technically on time. So much of life feels like racing ahead or

falling behind, but there are moments where right now can just be right now. And

that’s reason enough to feel whimsical.

Whether you call it romanticizing life, stopping to smell the roses, or, obscurely,

whimsy hunting, there will always be these pockets of time that come and go,

extending olive branches of happiness to us. And we’re going to miss a lot of them.

But the ones we don’t miss, when we take just one extra second to notice what

would have happened regardless, can give us so much that we wouldn’t even think

to seek out or ask for. As I wrote this list, I drank matcha that was just the right level

of creamy, I put my hair in a bun that didn’t fall out, my phone alarm did not ring

once, and I laughed wildly about something that’s already slipped my mind. And I’d

say I’m, ever so slightly, a happier person now because of it.

Whimsy hunting is an investment, and there will always be something to show for

the good that comes into our lives.