Feeling Lucky?

“I lost myself in an Easy-Bake Oven kind of dream…”Or at least, that’s what our current social construct would have us believe.

When we were children, baking tiny, stale cakes in an Easy-Bake Oven was seen as cute — endearing, but never truly serious. The final product was always just a saccharine brick of wheat, never a real dessert.

In much the same way, society often dismisses the experience of falling in love as naive, and going through heartbreak as infantile. I mean, nowadays, telling your best friend you’re heartbroken over a crush gets you the same response you’d get from your mother when she asked if you’d had breakfast — and truthfully, all you’d had was a bowl of Lucky Charms. That same trivializing look of disappointment, followed by a gentle but condemning:“Honey, you know better.”

Meanwhile, if you knock on psychology’s door — real, foundational psychology, the one that actually got a degree — she will tell you a very different story.

She’ll boast about Henry (no, not Cavill — Lord, Murray), one of the early pioneers of personality theory, who believed that love — the longing to connect, to be seen and held — isn’t just a side quest in our lives. It’s a fundamental drive, just as powerful as ambition or achievement.

She’ll gush over Allport, who dedicated his life to studying what makes people uniquely human; who emphasized that personal dispositions shape how we experience and pursue meaningful connections. To Allport, the capacity to love — sincerely, deeply — was a sign of maturity and psychological health. So when someone shrugs off your heartbreak with a smirk or a meme (we’re still sending memes, right?), they’re not being evolved. They’re being dismissive of something that actually marks growth.

Lastly, she’ll rave about Goffman, who famously wrote about the presentation of self in everyday life. He argued that life is performance and that we’re constantly shaping how others perceive us. The problem is, vulnerability — especially romantic vulnerability — isn’t trending. It doesn’t look good on Instagram. I believe it’s mainly because it’s harder to profit from a healthy, healing journey. Most of what you need in this journey comes from intrinsic needs (a.k.a., from within).

So instead of showing the rawness of real feelings, we curate detachment or a “nonchalant” persona. We perform indifference. And we confuse that with strength.

But my question still stands:

What if the performance is the real lie? What if being devastated over someone who made your heart thump is not a weakness, but a beautifully human response to risk and connection?

Where does all this apathy come from? And why are we so resistant to feeling love?

When did this all start? And when is the domino effect going to end? Because right now, it feels never-ending…

So yeah — maybe I did lose myself in an Easy-Bake Oven kind of dream.But maybe that’s exactly where we’re supposed to lose ourselves — in the cloying optimism of our Lucky Charms, every now and then.