The party is over. It has been for weeks. The balloons sag in their wrinkly skin and I, a forever sentimental sap, look at them with pure admiration. I know we should get rid of them. But they're colorful joy and I can't bring myself to pop them.
My partner, on the other hand, regards the balloons for what they are—shrunken latex filled with warm, breathy air.
We begin joking about the balloons which leads to joking about my insistence on not being wasteful... something that usually plays out in my desire to turn empty peanut butter jars into overnight oat containers and make sure, I mean really make sure the toothpaste tube is empty before discarding it.
My partner says, "you're worried about wasting helium?" seemingly unaware that these balloons were never floating on their own.
"No!" I whine in an overexaggerated fashion, "I'm worried about wasting whimsy!!"
Surely, I have won with this. But then:
"Whimsy? You're worried about wasting whimsy?! Whimsy is the one thing we have in abundance!!"
And the canned line I had about how they weren't helium to begin with was instantly taped over with abundant whimsy.
Whimsy is the one thing we have in abundance.
Playfully quaint. Fanciful humor. Levity.
Of course, we have whimsy in abundance. How fortunate we are to live lightly. To be able to move through the day with banter. To laugh and laze.
We have whimsy in abundance because we choose it. Because we choose to play along in made-up games and we choose to dance to old show tunes and we choose to see adventure—even if that adventure is as silly as retrieving a lid that fell behind the oven.
It's easy to hear the word whimsy and think of Disneyworld or magic or things that exist beyond our day-to-day.
But I think my partner's right. I think whimsy is something we have in abundance. I think the real magic is being able to see it.
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