I'm from L.A., so I'm used to seeing people in sunglasses and

Hear the words of Meghan Markle, who once observed with gentle wonder: “I’m from L.A., so I’m used to seeing people in sunglasses and flip-flops. There’s something so romantic about a man in a scarf and a knitted hat.” At first, this seems but a simple remark about clothing, about the difference between one city and another. Yet beneath these words lies a deeper meditation on contrast, on longing, and on the way our hearts attach meaning to the unfamiliar.

In Los Angeles, the sun reigns eternal, and the people dress in lightness—shades to guard the eyes, sandals to free the feet. The rhythm of life there is easy, bright, and perpetual. To Meghan, raised in this climate of sun and ocean, such sights were ordinary, even invisible. But in the colder lands, where scarves are wrapped close to the throat and hats shield against frost, she saw something new: a vision of romance. What others might call common, she called beautiful, for it carried the aura of difference, of mystery, of longing for what one does not already possess.

This is the essence of romance: not always found in the thing itself, but in the contrast between the known and the unknown. The scarf and the hat are not, in themselves, extraordinary garments. But to eyes accustomed to endless summer, they carry the poetry of winter—the promise of warmth, of intimacy, of the shared fire. Just as the desert dweller dreams of rivers, and the northerner dreams of the sun, so the heart finds beauty in what it does not already hold.

History offers us echoes of this truth. Consider the tale of Marco Polo, who left the familiar streets of Venice to journey into the East. What he found there—silks, spices, palaces, and strange customs—seemed to him wondrous, not because they were universally magnificent, but because they were new, unknown, and in contrast to his own world. His writings were filled with awe, and Europe, hungry for difference, was enchanted. So too does Meghan’s remark remind us: the romantic often lies not in the thing itself, but in the vision of the foreign and the unfamiliar.

And yet, this is not mere novelty. The scarf and the hat suggest something deeper: care and vulnerability. To cover oneself against the cold is to admit need, to display humanity in its frailty. A man dressed against winter’s bite becomes a figure both strong and tender, and it is in this paradox that romance is born. The sight stirred Meghan’s imagination because it symbolized warmth, closeness, and the quiet poetry of endurance in a cold world.

The meaning of her words, then, is not about fashion but about perspective. What is ordinary to one may be wondrous to another. What is invisible to the native eye may appear beautiful to the stranger. And so life itself teaches us: to find romance, we must sometimes look not at what we know too well, but at what lies just beyond our experience, where difference ignites imagination.

Therefore, children of tomorrow, learn this lesson: do not scorn what seems plain, nor overlook what seems ordinary. To another, it may be wondrous, even romantic. Train your eyes to see the beauty in contrast, to embrace the unfamiliar, and to cherish the subtleties of life—the scarf in the snow, the sandals in the sun, the small signs of humanity’s struggle against nature. In such details lies the poetry of existence.

Thus Meghan Markle’s words, spoken lightly, become a teaching of depth: the romantic is found not only in the grand and dramatic, but in the humble, the ordinary, the contrast between what we know and what we dream. And if you open your eyes, even the scarf and the knitted hat may become a symbol of wonder, of longing, and of love.