Entry No. 05 — What It Really Means to Be Whimsical
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of whimsy lately.
It started after I read a Substack that made me want to go deeper into the idea, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized whimsy is not just an aesthetic or a personality trait.
It’s a way of being.
For me, it’s one of the things that keeps life from becoming purely functional.
There is a certain kind of adulthood that can feel flattening. You wake up, eat, work, run errands, make dinner, sleep, and do it all again. Of course routine is part of life, but sometimes I can feel the absence of something softer so strongly. Some days I have withdrawals from that lust for life.
That’s where whimsy comes in.
To me, whimsy is permission. Permission to imagine, to feel soft, to choose beauty without needing to justify it. It’s what brings me back into contact with myself.
I feel it most when I’m with my girlfriend and we’re just…being girls. Skipping around, giggling together, being silly, letting something ordinary feel light and alive.
I feel it in nature, in tarot, in spiritual rituals, in moments that don’t produce anything but still feel full.
I think part of why whimsy feels so powerful is because it is tied to memory. Not just nostalgia in the sense of wanting to go back, but nostalgia as recognition. A return to the parts of yourself that existed before everything had to be explained, optimized, or performed.
As a child, I was drawn to color, mythology, fairies, faraway kingdoms, and anything that felt mystical or symbolic. When I look at myself now, I realize none of that ever left. It just changed form. It became the art I love, the stories I’m drawn to, the symbolism I notice, the clothing that moves me. Maybe whimsy is not something you invent. Maybe it is something you remain connected to.
That’s also why it feels so tied to femininity for me. Not polished femininity, but instinctive femininity.
Emotional, cyclical, playful, alive.
The kind that doesn’t need to explain itself. There is something quietly powerful in letting yourself be drawn toward what delights you, even when it is impractical or unnecessary. Choosing whimsy can become a way of choosing yourself.
Spring feels full of that same energy. It returns with softness, color, and movement. It loosens the world.
Rilke’s line feels so perfect because it captures that sense of instinctive remembering, as if the earth already knows how to become enchanted again. That’s what whimsy feels like to me too; a kind of return.
And of course, clothing is part of that. Whimsy in clothing is not costume. It is the piece that feels a little impractical but completely right, a sheer blouse with frills and flowers, something your younger self would have loved instantly. Not because it is useful, but because it creates feeling. Because it interrupts routine. Because it reminds you that beauty can still be reason enough.
Maybe that’s what I really mean when I talk about whimsy.
Not childishness, but aliveness.
Not escapism, but presence.
Not excess, but a refusal to let life become only practical.
In a world that asks us to be efficient and self-aware at all times, whimsy asks us to stay open. To let beauty matter. To let softness matter. To let delight matter.
And maybe that’s not frivolous at all.
Maybe it’s how we keep from disappearing.
Published April 2026
Vienna
