Stop Romanticizing Your Life. Start Eroticizing It.

We've been told for years to romanticize our lives. Buy the flowers, light the candle, wear the linen dress, watch the sunset. Make your life look beautiful. And while I understand the sentiment, I've come to believe there's something far more powerful available to us. Instead of romanticizing life, what if we eroticized it?

Not in the way you're thinking. Not by making everything sexual, but by becoming fully awake to pleasure, sensation, desire, and presence. By allowing ourselves to truly feel our lives instead of simply observing them. Somewhere along the way, many of us became spectators to our own existence. We photograph the meal before tasting it. We capture the sunset before letting it wash over us. We curate moments instead of inhabiting them.

Lately, I've become less interested in looking beautiful and more interested in feeling alive. There is a difference. One seeks admiration. The other seeks experience. One lives on the surface. The other reaches down into the marrow.

At forty-seven, I no longer feel compelled to compete with youth. Youth is lovely, but there is a different kind of beauty that comes from knowing yourself. From understanding what delights you, what nourishes you, what sets your soul humming. There is freedom in no longer asking permission to take up space, to want what you want, to follow your curiosity, your pleasure, your appetite for living.

To eroticize life is to drink your coffee while it's still hot and actually taste it. To linger in the ocean a little longer. To buy the good olive oil. To wear the perfume on an ordinary Tuesday. To let music move through your body. To laugh loudly. To kiss slowly. To stop rushing through the very life you've worked so hard to create.

I think what many of us are truly hungry for isn't more success, more possessions, or even more beauty. We're hungry for feeling. For connection. For wonder. For those moments when we become so present that life seems to glow from within. The warmth of the sun on your shoulders. Salt on your skin after a swim. A perfectly ripe peach. A conversation that leaves you changed. A love that softens you. A morning that asks nothing of you except that you be there for it.

The older I get, the less interested I am in a life that looks good from the outside and the more interested I am in a life that feels good from the inside. I want to experience it fully. I want to savor it. I want to be moved by it. Because this life was never meant to be admired from a distance. It was meant to be tasted.

And if I'm lucky enough to still be here, standing barefoot beside the ocean at forty-seven, then I intend to take a bigger bite.