The Beautiful Madness - Crushes on Strangers
We shouldn’t do it, of course. Everyone says so. We’ve been warned against it by older cousins, therapists, random online listicles. The smug voice of Reason itself. And yet, we do it anyway. Like a child putting fingers on the hot stove just to check if “don’t touch that” is really a universal law. We know better, but knowing better rarely stands a chance against the peculiar magic of the human imagination.
From the barest fragment, we hallucinate an entire person. One glance across a crowded bar, one exaggerated thank you from the barrisa who hands us our Monday morning coffee, one stranger brushing past us on a dance floor at 1:17 a.m. that's all it takes. And suddenly, we’re architects of an elaborate fantasy, spinning out entire futures form thin air, writing whole love stories where none exist.
It’s a little insane, objectively speaking. We take next to nothing; just the shape of a smile, a particular turn of phrase, a pair of hands with veins that suggests they’ve written long letters with fountain pens, and we decide we know them. Not just know them, but know them deeply. As if we’ve been waiting for their arrival our whole lives, and the universe has finally delivered them by way of a bar stool, or a train platform or a coffee cart on the corner.
Our lack of knowledge becomes an invitation. And Oh, what a seductive invitation it is. An invitation to poetry, to longing, to reckless romantic projection, to silliness in its purest most delicious form. Suddenly, this person, this near total stranger, is not only a crush. They are a cure. They are the one who will finally understand the intricate sadness we keep half hidden away. A test to see if the next one will love us exactly the right way. The’ll be sad the way we are sad, but never in a way that overwhelms the joy. They’ll get us without explanations without words. They’ll speak in glances. In gestures, In perfectly chosen silences. They’ll anticipate our thoughts before we’e even wrangled them into sentences for ourselves.
In the fantasy, there’s no discord. No petty arguments about where the recycling goes or who left the towel on the floor. No “could you just” or “you always” or “not tonight, I’m tired”. ONly seamless companionship. Only a kind of cosmic recognition that says: Oh: there you are, I’e been looking for you since forever”
In fact, the most delicious twist of all; they’re not strangers at all. They’ve been with us, from the start. They’ve existed in the back room of our longing, and we’ve just been waiting for the face, the body, the laugh, the coffee scented moment that brings them into focus.
And of course, the very mature people, those paragons of self control and sensible footwear, cannot resist warning us. They are relentless. They shake their heads with that expression that says darling, you’ll learn. They insist, with the authority of having filed taxes on time for twenty years, that it is adolescent, pureile, patronising, and plain daft to fall into crushes with strangers. they call it delusion, projection, arrested development.
But tell me honestly: can we really subsit on only reality? Can we endure a diet made up of entirely cod eyed wisdom, stripped of sugar, stripped of salt, stripped of spice? Must everything be measured, weighed, confirmed by receipts and verified by proof?
No, absolutely not.
There must be, there must be, a role for the occasional, deliberate, even gleeful suspension of common sense. Because crushes, are ridiculous, remind us that imagination is not just for children. Crushes are daydreams that wear the disguise of romance. They are creativity hitchhiking in on desire.
And yes, Crushes are an illusion. They are a demented little trick or the brain, a carousel of chemicals that light up like sparklers at the faintest spark. but isn’t there a kind of sanity in allowing ourselves those sparklers? Isn’t it. In fact, a little mad to try and live without daydreams at all?
A crush doesn’t announce itself politely. There is no knock at the door, no formal application form. it slips in sideways, through the curve of a smile, the way someone rolls up their sleeves, the fact that they said thank you in just the right way. its the smallest of triggers, but once its lit, the mind does the rest.
Sudnely, the woman who serves you coffee isn’t ‘just the woman who serves you coffee’. She’s the secret poet you’ll discover has a notebok full of verses she never shows anyone, except you. The man on the dnacefloor isn’t just the guy who asked you if you wanted water. No he’s the one who’ll later take you travelling, who will somehow both protect and liberate you, who will love your sharp edges instead of sanding them down.
In reality, the barista probably goes home and binge watches true crime while eating pasta strait from the pot. The dance-floor guy might be rude to wait staff or have a collection of exes who still roll their eyes at his name. but that’s the trick: in this fertile soil of the unknown, we plant only seeds we want to see grow. And for a while; before the illusion is peppered with reality, it is delicious.
I declare part is biology, sure. The brain loves a shortcut. It loves filling in gaps. Give it an outline and it will colour the rest. Thats why we see faces in clouds, animals in shadows. A crush is just our brain doing what it always does, only this time; its dressing the outline in fantasy lingerie and whispering, “this one. Its this one”.
But it cant be just biology. It’s longing. its the quiet hope that there is someone out there who can read us fluently, who speaks our emotional dialect without needing translation. And while logic tells us that no one can ever truly know us completely, romance authors and crushes tell us: maybe this one can.
And so we play. We let ourselves lean into the madness. We imagine them at our kitchen table, across from us on a train, beside us in bed at 2 a.m. We picture shared holidays, shared pets, shared heartbreaks even, because our fantasy lover is not only flawless, but also capable of holding us when we collapse.
And yet, the world is obsessed with telling us to stop. We’re supposed to be pragmatic, grown up, grounded. Crushes are painted as embarrassing, immature. To have one is to be unserious, frivolous, even slightly pathetic.
But I think thats fear talking. Adults are terrified of their own capacity for unguarded wonder. they’ve built their lives on routine and spreadsheets, and the idea that they might be undone by the tilt of a strangers smile is unbearable. So they scold us instead. They call it childish to belvie in that kind of immediate connection.
But childish doesn’t always mean wrong. Sometimes childish just means alive.
What if we stop asking crushes to be practical? What if we dont demand they become relationships, or real, or lasting? What if we just let them be exactly what they are? Momentary bursts of absurd hope, little secret poems the world hands us for free.
Because here’s the truth: the vast majority of crushes don’t lead anywhere. The stranger on the train never looks up again. The barista transfers jobs. The dance floor man disappears into the crowd. And thats okay; because the crush was never really about them. It was about us. it was about our own capacity to invent, to desire, to laugh at ourselves for wanting so badly, so foolishly.
Yes, rushes are delusional. Yes, they are fragile soup bubbles that pop the moment reality touches them. but inside that bubble is something tender. Something worth protecting.
Because to crush on a stranger is to admit: I still believe in magic. I still beleive that out of al the millions of faces in the world, one glance can undo me. I still believe that my heart is not a fortress but a balloon, happy to rise at the slighest gust of possibility.
And really, whats more human than that?
Do not stop daydreaming about the man who caught your eye on the escalator, or the woman who smiled too long when she handed me the change. I will not be shamed into living in a sensible world where everything is calculated and confirmed. Let yourself be ridiculous. Let yourself be a poet for the barrista, a novelist for the dnacer, a playwright for the man who the good shoes. Because life is already too much reality, too much responsibiliyt too much paying bills and two factor authenticated passowrds. if a stranger’s glance gives me a daydream that tasts like champagne bubbles. I’ll take it.
Call it madness. Call it childish. Call it what you like. I call it being alive.