The Romance of Fall

What is a hopeless romantic? To answer that question, I enlisted the help of UrbanDictionary.com, whose words are defined by everyday people.

Hopeless: “A person who has no hope with the opposite sex.” Keep in mind my source is of the world, and therefore narrowed in certain subjects. I would add that a person could be hopeless for many other surface reasons. However, the true reason we feel incapable, without hope, is in result of our design to be with God. Dig deep into the recesses of your desires, surface reasons are just shadows of the true reason.

Romantic: “A romantic is a person who believes in romanticism, which is like a philosophy on life. Romantics love nature, old things like castles and churches, love poetry and beauty, and have a tendency to get carried away by ideas. This can be both bad and good, as most of the original romantics stood up for their beliefs and greatly helped England, but also went to help people in revolutions and got killed. They also tend to get randomly depressed, but this is because the weather and colors and beautiful things make them act differently than others.” Romanticism is beautiful and thrilling. It is the excitement you experience as the seasons change, the sights of fall shown in the changing colors of leaves, the hope of fall in the promise for colder temperatures that will draw your loved ones close, the taste of fall when you buy your first candy corns of the season, or the scent of fall when you walk into Starbucks and smell pumpkin spice coffee brewing.  You can not deny it, from the toughest to the most weak in the knees, we are romanced.

Hopeless Romantic: “This person is in love with love. They believe in fairy tales and love. They're not to be confused as stalkers or creepy because that's not what a hopeless romantic is. All hopeless romantics are idealists, the sentimental dreamers, the imaginative and the fanciful when you get to know them. They often live with rose-colored glasses on. They make love look like an art form with all the romantic things they do for their special someone.” I cannot fight the temptation. I must name Meg Ryan as the epitome of a hopeless romantic. There are many others too, maybe you and me. When a girl starts to date a boy, and describes him to her friends as a hopeless romantic, a longing sigh is released from all within hearing. We woman are won over by a man that is a hopeless romantic…that is if we are the one he is hopeless for.

Urban Dictionary did not have a definition for a hopeful romantic. I typed ‘hopeful romantic’ into their search engine and was directed toward hopeless romantic as being a close match. According to Urban Dictionary, hopeful is to desire with the belief of possibly obtaining. One person commented that it is the feeling right before hopeless. It is interesting how the two definitions, hopeless and hopeful, intertwine. Yet, they remain two difference words, I believe for a reason.