I just remember Stella Tenant and me dancing in Donatella

When Carolyn Murphy spoke the words, “I just remember Stella Tennant and me dancing in Donatella Versace’s bathtub until like four in the morning. It was one of those ‘pinch me’ moments,” she was not only recounting a glamorous memory, but giving voice to the fleeting, dreamlike quality of life’s rarest joys. These are the moments when reality feels too wondrous, too strange, too enchanted to be believed, and the heart whispers, surely this cannot be real. Her words capture the spirit of wonder, of beauty and celebration, of being swept into a chapter of life where the ordinary rules are suspended.

To dance in a bathtub is to step outside the expected, to revel in joy unbound by convention. To dance until the morning is to surrender to the timelessness of delight. And to share this with Stella Tennant, a companion equally luminous, beneath the roof of Versace, a house of style and power, was for Murphy not only a memory but a symbol. It was the union of friendship, art, fashion, and freedom—a night where life revealed its magic without restraint. The phrase “pinch me” is ancient in spirit: it is the soul’s way of asking whether it has crossed into dream.

The ancients themselves knew the rapture of such moments. Did not Alexander the Great, when gazing at the breadth of his conquered lands, marvel at the sheer wonder of how far he had come from the boy of Macedon? Did not Cleopatra, sailing in splendor on the Nile beneath sails of purple, create scenes so wondrous that poets asked if they were illusions? These “pinch me” moments are the timeless reminders that life, though often burdened by struggle, is also capable of dazzling us with glimpses of immortality.

History offers us too the tale of the Ballets Russes, when young dancers in Paris, clad in wild costumes designed by Picasso and guided by Diaghilev, performed with such daring that the world gasped. To those artists, it was unthinkable that such beauty and brilliance could belong to them, yet they lived it—nights of creation and revelry, where art and life blurred into one. Just as Murphy marveled at her own surreal joy, so too did these artists live as though each evening were a dream of gods and mortals together.

But in Murphy’s recollection there is also humility. She does not speak with pride, but with awe. She remembers not wealth nor power, but the joy of dancing with a friend, the laughter echoing in a space meant not for ballrooms but for bathing. Here lies the deeper truth: that wonder is not always found in the grand designs of fate, but often in the playful, the unexpected, the human. A bathtub became a stage, friendship became enchantment, and the night became a story never to be forgotten.

The lesson is this: cherish the “pinch me” moments of your own life. They may not take place in the house of Versace, nor last until four in the morning, but they arise whenever joy overwhelms expectation—when you look around and marvel that such beauty could be yours to witness. Do not dismiss these moments as frivolous; they are treasures, reminders that life is more than toil and sorrow. They are gifts from the universe, proof that even amidst struggle, delight may still break forth like dawn.

Practically, we must learn to cultivate wonder. Seek friendship that lifts your spirit, embrace play that frees your heart, and allow yourself to be astonished by the unexpected. Do not fear stepping outside the ordinary—whether it be dancing in a bathtub or laughing in the rain—for such acts remind you that life is alive, pulsing, and radiant. And when these moments come, pause and whisper as Murphy did, “pinch me”, for they are the signs that you are living, not merely surviving.

Thus Murphy’s words, though spoken lightly, bear the wisdom of ages: that life’s greatest wealth is not measured in gold, but in the rare and wondrous memories that feel like dreams. Let us therefore live with open hearts, ready for the unexpected joy, so that when our own “pinch me” moments arrive, we may recognize them, embrace them, and carry them forever as proof that life, at its best, is nothing less than miraculous.