Romanticise Your Life? I Can’t Even Romanticise My Commute

Once upon a time (peak pandemic), romanticising your life was a harmless mental health trend. A soft-focus way to cope with isolation: lighting a candle, frothing your dalgona coffee, and listening to music while working on spreadsheets. Chic, no?

But flash forward to 2025, and we’ve entered the era of romanticising everything, or you’re doing it wrong. Morning commute? Better be sipping iced matcha and walking in slow motion. Eating food? It should be plated like a still from MasterChef and definitely should include avocado. Life has officially become one long, over-filtered reel.

Romanticising, by definition, is about making something seem better, more exciting, more ideal than it is. And somehow, our generation has taken that quite literally.

Every walk to the grocery store is now a Wes Anderson shot, and every minor inconvenience is “part of the plot.”

And the thing is, it’s understandable. In a world that’s overwhelming and often uninspiring, trying to find beauty in the everyday isn’t the worst instinct. But some things, simply put, are not meant to be romantic. There’s nothing dreamy about filming a cute Get Ready With Me while your Uber cancels three times and you're sweating through your linen co-ord.

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So, how did we get here? Well, films and social media didn’t create this trend; they simply handed us the tools and let our imaginations do the rest. Your life is not a rom-com. When you walk out on him, he’s not chasing you to the airport—he’s DMing his ex and logging onto Fortnite. Even the "soft girl" morning routines are suspiciously sponsored. You’re not lazy, you’re just not using that glow serum that apparently “changed everything.”

Let’s talk about the commute, shall we?

Romanticising your life sounds great until you're in a rickshaw, speed-bumping your way through potholes the size of existential crises. The only aesthetic thing about my morning is the sunlight bouncing off the auto’s metal roof directly into my eyeball.

It’s always the same: one hand clutching my bag like my life depends on it, the other swiping through Spotify, trying to make it feel poetic. But no amount of lo-fi Bollywood music can romanticise the smell of sweat, stress, and impatience on the Western line.

This is where the aesthetic fantasy hits a dead end. I’m not walking through streets with a croissant in hand. I’m dodging elbows on a crowded platform, trying not to make eye contact with anyone for too long. It’s hot. It’s noisy. And someone’s probably yelling.

Yet every time I scroll through reels of “that girl” sipping iced coffee and journaling before work, I pause. For a second, I wonder: am I not trying hard enough? But then I snap back to reality—because I’m literally trying to survive my daily scamper across the city. And that should be enough.

Here’s what no one tells you: trying to make every moment feel magical is kind of exhausting. There’s this constant pressure to curate your life, to live it a certain way, feel things a certain way, and present it a certain way. And if you don’t? You feel like you’ve somehow failed at existing.

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The truth is, in trying to find beauty in everything, we might be blurring the line between optimism and avoidance. Life is messy. It’s awkward. And sometimes, painfully un-Instagrammable. And that’s what makes it real. So sure, romanticise your coffee. Romanticise your friendships. Romanticise dancing in your room with a face mask on. But don’t forget—not everything has to be beautiful to be meaningful. Some days are just days. And that’s fine.

WAKE UP, BARBIE. You must arrive at work by 10:00 AM.

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