WhimsyMaxxing

If This Isn't Nice, I Don't Know What Is.

The New York Times recently stated that “whimsy is having a moment,” particularly with Gen Z and some millennials “who have recast the word to characterize a lifestyle that blends playfulness, spontaneity, and being present.”

It is touted as a response to compounding anxieties over a series of stressors (financial, political, social, occupational… really… pick a stressor). As a Gen X-er, I have spent most of my life armored in a thick coat of irony, using humor and adjustable dosages of sarcasm to help navigate the serpentine dance through life’s slings and arrows. However, cynicism can be exhausting and, in an age when nearly-naked alpha-males wrestle each other on the White House lawn for a paying audience to celebrate our nation’s Semiquincentennial, I fear irony is not only dead, it has been cremated, melted down, and sold back to us as cryptocurrency.

And so, I am now asking myself if I - a man of advancing age and ever-present anxiety - am capable of embracing something as spontaneous, as dangerously ignoble, as whimsy? Does giving myself over to playfulness mean opening myself up to abject humiliation? I’ve worked very hard to avoid such embarrassing scenarios, ever since I found myself cast as an actor at a Renaissance Festival in the early 1990’s, wandering the grounds in period garb uttering phrases like, “Indeed, good visitor, the privy is to your left, behind the giant turkey leg stand. Fare thee well!” With a track record like that, how am I supposed to let my guard down, a guard I’ve spent decades building with sturdy precision?

And then I remind myself, whimsy needn’t be purely silly. Whimsy doesn’t require one to skip to the mailbox each day, or use a Ted Lasso sock puppet to place their coffee order (Though I’d pay to see that one). One of my favorite quotes, and one I too often forget to instate in my daily routine, is Alan Watts’ dictum, “This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

In an age when so many of us are leaning into mindfulness practices to stave off monkey mind, the act of being “completely engaged” may be whimsical in and of itself. To cast aside worries about deadlines and emails, headlines and hostilities, in deference to just noticing a solitary moment, might be the most revolutionary mental health breakthrough we can make. How cold the milk tastes right out of the fridge, and how perfectly paired to that PB&J you just took a bite of. How quickly that cloud overhead went from pink cotton ball to a red silhouette of Don Quixote on his weary horse. How cosmically perfect that your favorite guilty pleasure Yacht Rock song chose THIS moment to play inside Trader Joe’s. (Extra whimsy points if you sing the Michael McDonald harmony vocal in the produce section.)

These moments might feel less quaint and more, dare I say, revolutionary, if we think about just how miserable the world seems to want us to be these days. We have our first trillionaire in an age of massive wealth inequality. Companies offer free weekly yoga classes to counterbalance the stress of 60-hour workweeks (just show up an hour early to work!). We continue to chase authentic human connection through the facade of digital platforms, filled with bots, silos, and echo chambers that only increase our loneliness.

And yes, in a quest for aesthetic human perfection, we now have FaceMaxxing, wherein young men intentionally alter the structure of their faces with steroids, surgeries, and - worst case - hammers, to achieve some sort of chiseled physical superiority. (I wish I were making this shit up.) The presence of the Manosphere alone makes the need for whimsy (especially in men) feel as essential as oxygen. In a world of Andrew Tates, what could feel more revolutionary than standing barefoot in a patch of moss and reciting a few pages of Whitman’s “Songs of Myself” at the top of your lungs?

“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed,
I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

That feels far more gratifying to me. Call it WhimsyMaxxing. (Yes, WhimsyMaxxing…and, yes, I’ve already applied for the trademark.)

Mileage will vary as to what whimsy looks and feels like, but I don’t think it requires making oneself feel foolish. What does play look like to you? What does wonder feel like? Maybe start there. And don’t discount how quickly even spoon-sized servings can fill you up.

Mostly, I think whimsy is about noticing moments that cultivate joy and marinating in them for a bit. I believe Kurt Vonnegut knew a thing or two about whimsy, and for him, it was as simple as paying attention to the purest of delights. Here’s Kurt’s take on it:

“But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well- read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

In essence, Uncle Kurt captured the whole whimsical movement right there: paying attention, expressing gratitude, and delighting in the seemingly trivial amid a world bent on gravitas. It isn’t about avoiding the serious. It’s merely about getting enough oxygen into our lungs so we can make it through the deep, murky waters of the serious, every damn day.

And so, here is to noticing - true open awareness - those moments when we spontaneously indulge in delight. Caught off guard by beauty, surprisingly tickled by absurdity, momentarily captivated by wonder. Whimsy may sound frivolous, but in a world calibrated to have us all putting Zoloft in our smoothies, it may very well be the most essential ingredient in our daily diet.