Why Men Should Live Romantically

The act of cohabitating with someone is not inherently a relationship; relationships are what cause your life to change. You have the option to choose between living an uncomplicated, unromantic lifestyle or going out on a limb and trying something new in order to live authentically.

Men should live romantically with women because it makes them feel more comfortable. Men are typically not very comfortable around other men. Read more in detail here: what makes a man feel comfortable with a woman.

Winston Churchill was welcomed into Neville Chamberlain’s government in 1939 to serve as First Lord of the Admiralty (meaning he was in charge of the British fleet). He assumed command of every aspect of the fight at sea and started planning about how to make things better on all fronts. Manchester explains the contents of his black dispatch box, which was at the core of his control center:

“On the inside, there were numbered folders with sheets measuring 16′′ x 13.′′ The first, dubbed the “top of the box,” dealt with issues that were deemed “very important.” Below the top were files holding military and foreign office telegrams, reports from the Chiefs of Staff…answers to queries he had made about every facet of British life, including food supply, agricultural yields, railroad capacity, and coal output. Nothing went unnoticed by him.”

Churchill would browse through his dispatch box every morning and send a seemingly endless stream of memoranda to his colleagues ministers and military leaders. He demanded action performed on a dispatch if he signed it in red ink; an accompanying slip labeled “Action This Day” was “the prime ministerial equivalent of a five-alarm inferno.”

Churchill’s colleagues found the sheer volume of memoranda he sent burdensome at times; they didn’t “appreciate Churchill’s mastery of all the difficulties, not simply those obvious to everyone but also those evident only to himself,” Manchester writes. Churchill had a single-minded purpose of defeating the Nazis, and he made sure he was aware of every element of the campaign’s progress.

Despite his ability to be tough, grounded, and detail-oriented, Churchill was also “an unrepentant romantic,” according to Manchester. This characteristic, more than any other, was what enabled him to win the war. Also, we’d want to add, to have a fantastic adulthood.

The Romanticism of Winston Churchill

Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.” A picture is worth a thousand words, and even if you don’t know anything about Romanticism, you can learn all you need to know by looking at this artwork.

While we often use the term “romantic” to describe the ardor of romantic relationships these days, we’re talking about Romanticism with a capital R today: a life philosophy that values the rejection of pure rationalism in favor of intuition, imagination, and emotion; the embrace of nonconformity and sincerity; a tendency toward nostalgia; and the celebration of curiosity, spontaneity, and wonder. Churchill had all of these traits in spades, and they nourished an endless wellspring of vigor and passion that lasted to the end of his days.

a sense of amazement

Churchill maintained his seriousness and childish interest about the world even as he grew into one of the twentieth century’s finest statesmen. Violet Bonham Carter, one of his friends, ascribed this trait to his lack of formal schooling (he attended a military academy instead of a liberal arts college). Churchill, she noted, lacked the jaded cynicism that comes with a sheepskin at a university, and was energised by basic truths that others dismissed as cliché. “Everything beneath the sun was new—seen and assessed as on the first day of Creation,” Carter wrote to Winston Churchill. His outlook on life was filled of zeal and awe. Even the timeless truths seemed like a thrilling personal discovery to him.”

Curiosity feeds wonder, and Churchill fed his with a regular diet of thought, travel, adventure, and a lifetime study of history (more on those latter three pursuits in future installments). He was always delighted by the thrill of discovery, whether in a book or in a new location.

An Epic, Imaginative View of Life

Artists of the Romantic period aimed to produce unique works based on their unrestricted imagination. While Churchill enjoyed painting in his leisure time, life itself was the greatest canvas for his creativity. He refused to see the world as uninteresting and confined, instead seeing it as a glorious, wide-open field of possibilities in which the forces of good and evil battled. Any individual with enough guts and determination may become a hero and join the war.

Churchill used the power of words to bring his romantic, heroic vision of the world to life for himself and his nation. Many of man’s unique creations are met with skepticism at first, and Churchill’s argumentative approach was no exception. His opponents said he was extremely innocent before the war, and his oratory was bombastic and exaggerated. Many people rejected Churchill’s “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech, which is now revered, as simply another dose of his overdone schmaltz at the time.

Winston’s solitary vision, however, fuelled his indomitable fire and battle as the situation worsened. The fight was just a vivid, large-scale representation of the epic way he had always viewed the world, and defeat was simply not an option as the forces of evil advanced.

In his speeches, Churchill was able to build such a vivid, beautiful image of the war that his compatriots could almost walk into it and share his optimism and hope. “It wasn’t dirty or degrading; it wasn’t, in fact, like contemporary combat at all,” Manchester wrote of Churchill’s description of the conflict. Destroying the Nazis and their Führer became a noble objective, and he made the Union Jack ripple and St. George’s sword glitter by imbuing it with the aura of heroes like Nelson, men Englishmen had revered since boyhood.” Churchill’s ability to bring people into his world and persuade them to accept his vision was stated by Isaiah Berlin as follows:

“The Prime Minister was able to impose his imagination…on his countrymen…exactly because he looked bigger than life to them and raised them to an exceptional height in a crisis… It [changed] a significant number of citizens of the British Isles from cowards to courageous men by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and each other dressed in the fantastic clothing suited to a big historic time, and thereby accomplished the objective of dazzling armor.”

Others eagerly wanted a position in Churchill’s hero’s journey, which he thought to be so bright and fascinating.

Nonconformity is Embraced

Some of Churchill’s favorite books were written by romantic transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. And he agreed with the latter that “Whoever wants to be a man must be a nonconformist.” Of course, in his own special Churchillian style.

Churchill adored both history and tradition. “In boyhood and early adulthood, notably in the company of the officers of the 4th Hussars,” Manchester writes, his “veneration and pleasure of ritual, color, gaiety, pomp, and formality” started. His military days as a cavalryman had been filled with lengthy, elegant banquet meals when he dressed up in his magnificent blue and gold uniform and exercised his finest table manners. After leaving the military, he maintained the habit of holding such formal dinners; both lunch and supper at Chartwell were drawn-out events, and despite the fact that they were given in the comfort of his own house, he dressed to the nines. Churchill believed that such rituals were necessary for a full and happy existence.

Churchill, on the other hand, defied the existing quo whenever he saw fit. Winston “venerated tradition, but mocked convention,” as his senior military aide Pug Ismay phrased it. Churchill followed his instincts when he believed there was a better way to accomplish things, from his pleasure of being naked to his distinctive daily regimen. Churchill’s personal style reflected this; although he overdressed for official occasions – he never visited Parliament without an old-fashioned frock coat and top hat — he wore significantly less formal attire in circumstances when maintaining decorum wasn’t as critical. He crept about in a green and gold silk dressing robe embossed with dragons at home when he wasn’t nude. During air attacks, he donned his siren suit, which became a symbol of the war. These mauve, one-piece, zippered rompers were created by Churchill himself and custom-made by Savile Row tailors. He loved the convenience of his siren suit: he could get into it as soon as the air raid sirens went off and prepare for the impending bombardment.

He had other amusing habits, such as talking to his cats, waltzing around late at night to records, supporting an imaginary partner and composing his speeches as he whirled around the room, and playing around so much in his daily baths – even doing somersaults – that a special drain was built to catch the overflow.

However, it was Churchill’s genuineness that defied cultural standards the most. The guy who people heard on the radio and saw in Parliament was the same man who they saw at home. He had no guile at all. He never put on a show, never adopted stances he didn’t believe in, and never pretended to be someone he wasn’t. He wouldn’t even sign his letters “Sincerely” until he was sure he was serious about the subject.

Intuition

“He had several paths in his head, and if one was blocked, he abandoned it and went to another, the existence of which he didn’t know about until he decided to expose it.” –William Manchester is a writer who lives in Manchester, England.

Churchill’s leadership was mostly influenced by intuition. Churchill had determined in his youth not to “dismiss the arguments of the heart for those of the mind,” as we discussed in relation to his moral code. As a result, he was often branded as unreasonable. Rather of being offended, he gladly accepted the allegation, contending that it was also the essence of life:

“The human tale does not always develop in the manner of a mathematical calculation based on the concept of two plus two equals four. Occasionally in life, they add up to five, or subtract three, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the midst of the sum, causing chaos in the classroom and a black eye on the pedagogue. The element of the unexpected and unanticipated is what gives life some of its zing and keeps us from succumbing to the logicians’ mechanical thraldom.”

During his escape from a POW camp during the Boer War, Churchill had one of his earliest encounters with the power of intuition. He was absolutely befuddled and terrified since he had no notion which direction to go to go to freedom. “Suddenly, for no apparent reason, all my misgivings vanished,” he realized at that very moment. They were definitely not dispelled via a logical procedure. I simply had a feeling…[where] I’d go.” For hundreds of miles, Churchill landed up at the only property where the locals were friendly to the British.

As he grew older, Churchill continued to trust his instincts. It not only helped him make choices, but also provided him with insights and foresight into the future. “The painter’s ability for perceiving various views, far and close,” Manchester asserts. He was one among the first prominent people to perceive Hitler’s threat, and he envisioned how the nation would have to come together to oppose him. And this was far from Churchill’s sole true forecast; he predicted the MAD (mutually assured destruction) strategy, the possibilities and perils of atomic energy, agricultural and animal bioengineering, the development of television, and much more.

While Churchill’s views were occasionally mocked when he initially expressed them, his foresight was usually proven correct over time. “It is interesting how, overseas as well as at home, what Churchill puts up one year as a daring contradiction, becomes an accepted truth a year later,” Harold Macmillan, one of Churchill’s wartime ministers, commented.

Emotion and Sentiment

Churchill not only openly acknowledged the importance of intuition, but he also confessed to being sentimental and emotional. He was capable of extreme delight as well as profound melancholy, and he struggled with depression at one point. This has given rise to the idea that he was afflicted by the “black dog” throughout his life, although it seems that he was more often struck by periods of sadness that did not progress to clinical depression. Such sadness would often follow bad news from the war, but Churchill would always shrug it off and return to a confident bullishness.

One thing was certain: he felt everything strongly. He freely admitted to friends that he was a blubberer, and Manchester claims that “no man sobbed more easily.” He might become teary-eyed reminiscing with former buddies, and he would openly grieve the loss of his beloved dogs. Even drafting emotive passages of his speeches may cause him and his assistants to cry uncontrollably. “I’d be sobbing and he’d be weeping, and all the time he was dictating in his magnificent voice and I’d be tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-

Churchill’s agnosticism had no effect on his sense of the holy or the emotional sentiments he had at religious rites; he cried during his grandson’s baptism and when singing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” with a crew of British sailors. His skepticism regarding the existence of a spiritual dimension didn’t exclude him from experiencing numerous levels of reality, as shown by his account of what it was like to be there in the House of Commons on the day Britain declared war on Germany:

“A profound sensation of peace came over me as I sat in my seat, listening to the speeches, following the high emotions and excitements of the previous few days.” I was aware of a sense of raised distance from human and personal issues, as well as a sense of mental tranquility. The splendour of Old England, peace-loving and unprepared as she was, but prompt and courageous when called upon, filled my being and seemed to raise our destiny to levels far distant from earthly realities and bodily sense.”

Music, literature, and poetry aroused Churchill’s emotions and allowed him to reach these deeper aspects of existence. He not only adored and memorized virtuous works like “Horatius” and “Invictus,” but he also knew by memory reams of romantic poetry, particularly Lord Byron’s lyrics.

Contemplation and Solitude

Churchill enjoyed spending time privately contemplating to examine his feelings and get intuitive insights. After lunch, he would relax in a wicker chair near a pond on his property, and he particularly enjoyed sitting by the fire in his bedroom. Except for one fireplace, which he insisted on burning wood, all of his stoves in his house were coal-fired. He’d sit for hours in front of the roaring flames, prodding the logs and thinking about the world and his place in it.

Lesson #3’s Takeaways

The world is full of promise and possibilities when you’re a kid, and your sense of wonder is quickly sparked. You’re certain that your garden is covered with riches and dinosaur bones, you want to be an astronaut, and when it comes to the thrill of Christmas Eve…fuggetaboutit. Life seems to be a never-ending stream of happiness and good fortune.

As you get older, you realize that the world does not always function as you had planned. Santa Claus is a myth. You’re dumped by your first love. You are not accepted into the college of your choice. You don’t get the job of your dreams. Your father passes away before you reach the age of thirty. Your wife had a miscarriage, and it hurts a lot more than you imagined.

You learn to moderate your expectations and be realistic. You construct barriers. You have a lower level of trust. To protect yourself from future setbacks, you shroud yourself in cynicism.

Nothing actually delights you as it did when you were a kid. “It is what it is” becomes your war cry, and “Meh” becomes your watchword.

But what if “what it is” isn’t what it seems to be? What if you could restore your sense of wonder and optimism just by rethinking your life from a more romantic perspective?

However, I’m just a regular guy!

“Sure, it was simple for someone like Churchill to adopt a romantic vision of life – the epic things he encountered were romantic,” you would think. But I’m not fighting the Big One; I’m simply going about my business.”

Churchill had some extraordinary experiences, both those that he sought out and those that destiny threw upon him. However, it is important to remember that Churchill did not become Prime Minister until he was 65 years old; his romanticism was fostered throughout his life, not only during WWII. And, although he had plenty of other experiences in the six decades leading up to the war, they didn’t fuel his romanticism; rather, it was the romantic worldview that encouraged him to seek adventure. Similarly, his whole life did not consist of continually thrilling events; for many years, he lived a life similar to that of ordinary residents. His romanticism was what made such “lulls” more engaging and rewarding than they would have been otherwise. Finally, as we’ve seen, Churchill’s lifelong romanticism was precisely what equipped him to be a successful leader once he was thrust into a monumentally epic stage.

Whether or whether our lives ever connect with some great mission, living more passionately will enrich and illuminate even the most mundane day-to-day life. You may choose to regard life’s possibilities as one-dimensional: humans are simply smarter apes; a wet day is just a weather pattern; and that rumbling in my stomach is just indigestion from a ham sandwich. Alternatively, you can choose to pick up on other energies in the world and see different layers in life: people are potential heroes; a rainy day is an opportunity to reflect and experience the paradoxically exquisite tremor of melancholy; the stirring in my gut is guiding me down a particular path.

In a 2005 graduation speech to Kenyon College, author David Foster Wallace stated that the capacity to “build meaning from experience” was probably the most crucial talent for newly-minted adults to gain. It will be “within your ability to perceive a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type environment as not just significant, but holy, on fire with the same energy that formed the stars: love, camaraderie, the mystical oneness of all things deep down” if you master it, he claimed.

How to Make Your Life More Romantic

Manchester claims that Churchill became who he was as a result of a “collision of logic, intuition, and imagination.” It’s also because of this mix of characteristics that adulthood is both exciting and gratifying. However, attaining a balance of these energy isn’t simple, since it requires combining a number of distinct perspectives on life:

Being rational, grounded, and detail-oriented but simultaneously being intuitive
Being clear-eyed, practical, and inventive at the same time
Being calm and firm while simultaneously allowing oneself to feel fully is a difficult combination to achieve.
Embracing tradition while living a life that is out of the ordinary

Churchill himself commented on the seeming inconsistencies and complexities:

“Feed your dreams, but don’t lose sight of reality.”
“Facts are preferable than dreams.”
“Imagination without a foundation of profound and complete knowledge is a trap.”

It’s an uncommon, but achievable talent to be able to analyze reality with perfectly clear eyes while also exercising the ability to perceive it lovingly. The impact of merging these diverse energies into one’s life is similar to that of a particle collider: the interaction between your many beliefs/ideas/interests gives access to new information and planes of existence that would not otherwise be conceivable.

Most adults, on the other hand, are unwilling to exert the effort required to harness that amount of energy; it is lot easier to fit one’s identity into a considerably simpler story. As a result, some individuals maintain their childhood creative skills into adulthood, but fail to link such impulses with a serious sense of responsibilities, and wind up as perpetual flakes. Most individuals choose the other approach, ignoring their creative and intuitive instincts entirely and adopting a cynical, harshly realistic outlook on life. “What you see is what you get; the world is what it is.” And what they receive is a life that is flat and one-dimensional.

Unfortunately, there is no blueprint for finding a distinctive middle ground between these all-too-common surrenders to subpar maturity. When it comes to romantic life, there is no such thing as a road plan – it’s something you should find through reflection and intuition! With that in mind, here are some broad guidelines for adding more romance into your life:

Locate Your Muse

Churchill’s love feelings were fueled by studying history and fighting in combat, as we’ll see in future parts. He was, nonetheless, inspired by nature, as were many romantics. Nothing, in my opinion, stirs the spirit more than being in the big outdoors. I can’t think of a better place to rediscover my youthful wonder, feeling of amazement, and belief in the mystery and richness of life than here. Emerson aptly describes the effect:

“I have had a wonderful excitement when crossing a naked common, in snow puddles, at dusk, beneath a cloudy sky, without having in my mind any incidence of extraordinary good fortune.” I’m happy I’m on the verge of panic. In the woods, too, a man sheds his years as a snake sheds its slough, and is always a kid, no matter how old he is. “Youth is eternal in the woods.”

Whatever your own muse is, every adult needs something to shake them out of their sleep of indifference and cynicism and re-energize them.

Participate in both traditional and customary rituals.

Rituals have a lot of power and potential: they give your hero’s journey a narrative structure, foster a sense of wonder and awe, act as a conduit for intuitive insights, facilitate personal transformations, and connect you to the rich possibilities, deeper layers, and sacred realms that exist within our everyday, profane existence.

Traditional traditions may seem to be the antithesis of romantics’ treasured creative spontaneity, yet they may also be the most stimulating and transportive. Attending Christmas Eve Mass, for example, is one of the few activities that renews my sense of surprise and mystery. Even basic traditions like table etiquette add a layer of complexity to our daily lives. Maintaining such traditions enriches not just your personal life, but also creates a shared universe with others — a moment in time that seems out of the usual.

There are instances, though, when being a nonconformist is appropriate. Creating our own rituals, such as creating a distinctive daily routine or just preparing coffee with a French press every morning, may help us achieve a peaceful, concentrated state of mind that allows us to receive intuitive currents and connect with the energies and rhythms of life.

Stir Your Emotions On Purpose

In your mid-twenties, the prefrontal cortex — the disciplined, logical, executive section of the brain – finishes “settling,” and you start to feel less deeply. On the plus side, you’ll feel more stable and have fewer of the erratic emotional highs and lows that come with youth. However, there is a loss in passion and a flattening of your sensations as a result of this. This is why adults frequently seem flat and uninterested in life.

Adults should consciously indulge in events that spark their deeper sentiments in order to keep a bit more emotional richness in adulthood without surrendering the firm footing of maturity that is necessary for advancement. So take a cue from the Victorians, who, although they prized maintaining a stiff upper lip through life’s unpredictabilities, consciously engaged their emotions during moments of their choice. For Churchill, this meant listening to music from his childhood and the nineteenth century in general (a period of history he admired), reading romantic poetry, and becoming emotional about special occasions and traditions. Christmas, for example, was Churchill’s favorite season, and he would lavishly decorate his home with decorations evoking the season and all of its nostalgic, happy memories.

All of Churchill’s tactics, notably listening to music, are beneficial. Turning on a song from your passionate youth may reawaken profound sentiments that once ruled your heart, and listening to music you liked at any crucial phase of your life might reawaken those old memories and emotions. Every now and then, I’ll place an album that had a lot of play at a pivotal period in my life into a metaphorical vault; I won’t listen to it for years, then dust it off every now and again to consciously transfer myself back into that emotional terrain. A similar thought occurred to Winston Churchill:

“Every conflict I’ve gone to, and indeed every vital or thrilling time of my life, I’ve had melodies in my brain.” When my ship arrives, I’m going to have them all recorded on vinyl records, and then I’m going to sit in a chair and smoke my cigar while sights and faces, moods and emotions long forgotten return; and pallid but true, the light of past days gleams.”

Reframe Your Situation

Being able to “build meaning from experience,” as Wallace phrased it, is a crucial aspect of infusing your life with more romanticism. You must be able to change the narrative of any encounter, no matter how painful or routine it may be. Consider the person who cuts you off in traffic; rather than being an a-hole, he may be in a rush to get his kid to the hospital, according to Wallace. This kind of re-framing isn’t about being naive, but rather about considering various options for a particular circumstance.

Are you slaving away at a job you despise, or are you risking your life every day to keep your family safe from hunger and poverty? Is it merely a case of people being heartless, or is every guy waging a terrible war that goes unnoticed? Is marriage a drudgery or a thrilling adventure? Is a layoff the end of your aspirations or the start of something new? Is the issue you’re facing a depressing turn of circumstances or an opportunity to grow as a man?

The significance of such things is never fixed in stone if you accept the opportunity to write your own life. It’s your narrative, and you get to pick whether it’s squalid or romantic.

Allow time for introspection.

The most formidable foe of romance is the bustle that comes with adulthood. Emotions, intuitive insights, and a feeling of awe are only accessible from a point of silence. We are obliged to subsist on just the most surface layer of existence when our lives consist of racing from one to-do to the next.

In a world of static, Romanticism is like a weak radio signal: we can only hear it if we go away to a calm spot, clear our minds of other distractions, and concentrate on discovering it. Prayer, meditation, and comprehensive thought are so necessary for us to stay in sync. It also doesn’t harm to lie beneath the Christmas tree and gaze up at the lights.

William Wordsworth, the ultimate romantic poet, composed a few lines of poem that brilliantly summarize everything:

“When I see a rainbow in the sky, my heart jumps up: thus it was when my existence started; so it is now that I am a man; so be it when I grow old, or let me die!” The Child is the Man’s parent, and I wish my days were all bound together by natural piety.”

“It is very astounding to reach the end of life and feel exactly as you did fifty years before,” Churchill said.

When was the last time your heart jumped up in amazement at life’s wonders and mysteries?

The Winston Churchill School of Adulthood will take a vacation during the holidays and resume in January. Then I’ll see you!

Complete the Series

The Winston Churchill Adult School is now open for enrollment. Lesson #1: Develop a Mighty Moral Code as a Prerequisite to Becoming the Author of Your Own Life Establish a Daily Routine (Lesson #2) Lesson #4: Develop a Nostalgic Feeling for History Lesson #5: Maintain Your Sense of Adventure Don’t Be Afraid to Start a Family (Lesson #6) Work Like a Slave; Command Like a King; Create Like a God is the seventh lesson. Winston Churchill offers advice on hustling, leadership, and hobbies. Conclusion: Thought with action equals a fantastic adulthood.

Sources:

William Manchester’s The Last Lion Trilogy

The “how does a man love a woman” is an age-old question that has been asked for years. This article will discuss why men should live romantically and what the benefits of living this way are.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does romantic mean to a man?

A: Romantic to a man means showing affection to someone you are romantically involved with. It is the most common definition for romantic, but there are many other definitions as well.

What does it mean to live romantically?

A: To live romantically means to have a partner and be in love with that person. It often refers to an exclusive, monogamous relationship where two people are attracted solely to each other.