This blog post title is a quote from the son of a friend. He made that statement to his younger brother around the time that the younger one was entering high school. I think the older brother was spot on with his advice.
Being cool is not something that one consciously projects. That’s not cool. That’s the opposite of cool. Trying to be cool isn’t cool. Bragging about being great, current, fabulous, different, interesting, smart, nice, attractive, accomplished, successful, sexy, or special isn’t cool. It may feed one’s ego and convince some believers, but that’s not what cool is about.
What is cool and what is not?
First, cool is unconscious and that is why trying to be cool is not cool. One doesn’t consciously project coolness, since it is the antithesis of coolness. It’s not about you doing anything to convince others of your status. Cool is not about you. Cool is how you interact with your environment and how others perceive and interpret that.
Cool is subjective. It’s not black and white. Here’s an example. Some think that people with tattoos on their skin are cool. Others think the opposite. Still others might evaluate individuals and their tattooed skin on a case-by-case basis, seeing some as really cool, kind of cool, or not cool at all. Not everyone is going to agree. Trying to be cool is moot because there is no universal formula to coolness.
Cool is dynamic. It’s a moving target. It changes over time. Everything changes over time. There is no permanence to coolness. It comes. It goes. You can’t have it forever because you can’t control it. It’s not yours to control anyway. You can influence others, but you can only control yourself.
So please stop trying to be cool all the time. It’s an impossible goal. Your cool act will start looking like a shield to protect yourself from the notion that you might not actually be very cool. You will end up looking weak and sometimes, ridiculous.
Perhaps it makes you feel superior to project your perceived coolness onto the lesser folks of the world like me, but it rarely makes us feel good, which is not cool to us, unless of course we’re laughing at how uncool you are so then, by all means, have at it. On the other hand, some genuine self-deprecation can improve things dramatically. It’s much cooler to not take yourself so seriously.
Are you wondering if the two brothers who live by “the minute you think you’re cool, you’re not” credo, turned out to be cool guys or not? I don’t know.
But I can tell you this: the older brother went on to finish his first novel before he finished college. He’s a writer, living an interesting and well-traveled life which, to me is very cool. The younger brother is a shy, quiet, unassuming fellow and is now at a large university. Midway through his high school tenure, my friend told me that the younger son had become such an accomplished guitarist that they were having trouble finding an instructor (even though they lived in a large metropolitan area at the time) who could take him to the next level. I think that’s pretty cool too.
These two young men have been afforded and have created the opportunity to follow their dreams and do what they love. They’ve managed themselves well, made good choices, and seem happy. How cool is that?
