The word “whimsy” has popped up in my inbox and social media feeds several times recently, which feels like a not-so-subtle sign from the universe.
Whimsy, rooted in the word “whim” and also attributed to a now-obscure term from the early 16th century, “whim-wham,” which was a word to describe an ornamental object or trinket or an eccentric interest, even sounds fun when you say it.
I think of whimsy as the tendency for childlike wonder — making space for things that are fun, without being practical or necessary. It’s about playing, and uncovering delight and humor where it doesn’t seem to belong.
Searching #whimsy on Instagram turns up images of brightly colored wallpaper, salt and pepper shakers shaped like tiny houses, and, to my delight, an AI-generated image of a rabbit, sipping tea out of a China teacup and wearing bunny slippers. (Is it whimsical or in poor taste for a rabbit to wear bunny slippers? You decide.)
Down I went into a rabbit hole (pun intended), searching for other ideas to introduce more whimsy into my life. I found examples of people who “vandalize” public objects with googly eyes, someone who reserves a special pair of “fancy” pajamas for nights she sleeps on freshly washed sheets, and playlists created for different moods. There’s hiding rubber ducks in unexpected places, decorating with fairy lights, or assembling miniature scenes tucked between books on the shelf. Some leave notes around the house for others to find, or celebrate obscure holidays like Groundhog Day, or commit fully to pranks on April Fool’s Day.
Once I started reading these ideas, I started realizing that I do some whimsical things in my own life that I hadn’t previously thought of as whimsical. For example, my car has a name: Lola the Corolla. In fact, I name other inanimate objects in my life: the copier at work is named Jolene; my Kitchenaid mixer is Adelaide. I clip funny photos or poems I find and stick them on the inside of my kitchen cabinets to “surprise” myself while doing mundane tasks. I’ve been known to hide action figures or other trinkets at the base of my houseplants.
Children learn through play. The full-time job for a child is playing, imagining, and creating. When does that stop? Is there a moment when we flip a switch and become people with worry lines on their foreheads and to-do lists that are a mile long? How would it reframe things if the to-do lists were written with glittery gel pens? Or crafted a crown to smooth out the forehead lines? What if we played fun dance music while we cleaned or did laundry? What if, ever so often, we traded a quick shower for a luxurious bubble bath?
It’s one thing to become a person who does the whimsical things, but it’s even more fun to imagine the people who come across the whimsy when they aren’t searching for it: the person who finds the rubber duck on a park bench, or notices googly eyes affixed to a cereal box. What a different place this world could be if we were all doing these tiny acts of defiance, injecting fun and creativity at unexpected moments! Would it awaken the inner child in more and more people, like the ripples that spread outward, outward, from a pebble dropped in a still stream?
There is so much that we have to do. But whimsy is something we get to do. Grab some fairy lights, make a playlist, and buy the biggest pack of sparkly gel pens you can find. It’s time to get down to the work of whimsy.
