Please, stop calling everything Whimsical

an attempt at defining the undefinable

There’s an old hollow fence post on my grandparents’ property. It stands to the side of the gravel road ~ a lone beacon in the stretch of field before the forest.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to do it. Maybe the first time it happened was before I was born, or maybe I was there to witness it. Either way, at some point, someone decided to drop a pebble into it.

And that’s how it became the Fairy Portal.

The sound that it makes is otherworldly: a crackling, snapping, fizzing sound that travels up from the depths of the hollowness. It sounds as if it must be miles deep ~ as if the sound is coming from the very depths of the earth where the rock is disintegrating into dust.

After doing it for a while, we decided one day that the fence post must be a portal to the fairy world that existed in the forest. And the sound? The fairy soldiers guarding their entrance and destroying anything that doesn’t belong.

To this day the portal impresses a sense of wonder any that witness its magic. I still don’t understand how such a sound could be possible, but I like to believe in the fairy idea.

This is just one of many, many whimsical adventures scattered throughout my childhood. Between the fence post, painting faces on the trees, and discovering Owl City at an early age—which is barely the tip of the iceberg—I’ve been a close friend of Whimsy for a good long while.

And something’s been taking place that horrifies me.

There’s this trend, climbing in popularity, being jumped upon left and right by all kinds of people.

It’s the Internet’s newest buzzword: whimsical.

Posts titled how to make your life more whimsical are sprouting up around every corner, containing suggestions like “watch all the movies from one director” (yes, this is a real tip from a real human; I, too, was appalled) and other things that are anything but whimsical.

Oh, how it pains me to witness this. It wouldn’t be all too bad if they understood it, but that’s just the thing ~ they don’t.

I want nothing more than for the world to gain a little more magic. For adults to rediscover how to find little fancies, how to view the world like a child again. And these well-intentioned souls are giving their best effort in this mission. Except for, I fear, the fact that they’ve forgotten what they used to know.

“A dream is not reality, but who’s to say which is which?”
~ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

The true definition of Whimsy

Many people seem to be equating romance—or fun, or joy, or lightheartedness—with Whimsy. They’re on the right path, but still not getting it quite right. You see, you can romanticize your life with whimsical things, but romantic things are not always whimsical.

A candlelit shower might feel romantic, but it’s not whimsical unless you imagine you’re bathing at midnight under a waterfall by the light of a fairy.

A walk in the trees might bring joy, but it’s not whimsical unless you’re searching the branches for forest gnomes or peering between the trees for the secret, vine-covered path to a castle.

The fog might be beautiful to some people, but it’s only whimsical to those who believe they can hear it whispering to them through the damp air.

Whimsy can bring joy and wonder, but all joyous and wondrous things aren’t inherently whimsical. Fun things can be whimsical, but they aren’t always.

Two people can do the same thing, dress the same way, see the same view, but only the one who feels the Magic behind it all is truly whimsical.

The difference is subtle, but it’s there.

Because true Whimsy begins in the heart of the beholder.

“I can hear the brook laughing from all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are?”
~ Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

Whimsy is fleeting, fluttering, hard to find ~ but found in many places, if you only look.

Whimsy is when the scent of spring twirls past on the hush of an autumn breeze. It’s in the way a branch trembles with nothing to show what caused it ~ in the way city lights twinkle like stars from afar. It’s in the face of the moon, whose smile few of us return.

Whimsy lives in our stories; in fairies that are born of a baby’s first laugh, in a garden full of talking flowers, in a rabbit hole that leads to a new world of curiosities.

Whimsy walks hand-in-hand with Joy and Wonder. It’s something that a child lives among without searching for it ~ something most adults have to find with intention. It can be dug up, sprinkled in, uncovered. It can flutter by like a butterfly’s wish or cry as loudly as a sunset after a thunderstorm.

“You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went off skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
~ Peter Pan

The harder I try to define it, the more she seems to slip from my grasp. Whimsy is a whispery thing, difficult to hold down for too long. It shifts, even, as it travels from one soul to another.

But I think, at the heart of it all, it’s this.

Whimsy is the feeling we get when we believe Magic still exists.

And maybe, just maybe, all it takes is a visit to a Fairy Portal.

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© 2025 Sol. All words solely the work of the author (and never AI).