So You Don’t Need To

You don’t need to be cool, you’re already too hot to handle…
 — Author of this article

“C’mon man, stay cool yo!”

Weird words, yet I used to pretend to be more like them.

Why?

I find it super unnatural to use such words, and I should be using this “yo” language even more often, as I’m a dumb teen. I used to disagree with the fact that I feel unnatural while pretending to be cool.

But no! I had convinced my mind that this is how I am!

Ha! I ask myself a question, “If you were this way, why weren’t you ‘cool enough’ right from the beginning?”

Why am I standing apart acting like a fragile mirror? Imitating what others do and fearing to be myself.

I’ve had this problem and it has troubled me. A lot. I tried to reshape, reform, make myself cooler just to be like others so that I’m not ignored.

The mind is awake all the time. It keeps running in the background, registering certain events and situations and analyzing them. Creating new beliefs and habit patterns.

It sees people being ignored as they aren’t “cool” enough.

It learns that “If you want to stay fit in this world, you’ve got to get cool!”

Henceforth, it starts imbibing all the idiotic qualities and practices that people are following.

The fear of not being cool (let’s just call it “coolophobia”), has made me do many thing s I never wanted to!

The mentality of catching up to the crowd’s standards is the only reason for the birth of coolophobia.

I have an example of a boy who had just entered high school and how everything seemed new to him.

The moment he entered 8th grade, he saw a sudden change. There was less carelessness and innocence in the jokes and incidents that happened around.

Things had drastically changed. Everything went a “level-up.”

The jokes we cracked, the behavior, the style, and almost everything. (Except the way people ate their food. Barbarous!)

Relations were made, rich and expensive “cool” fashionable stuff started being showed off. Movies were watched and discussed more than usual.

What was the boy supposed to do now? He felt like a generation behind his other so-called “cool” friends.

He came from a home where his spiritual and emotional quotient was taken care of. He didn’t come from a home where the parents let the child “try” to be cool.

He had spent his summer in a different way than the others.

But coolophobia had caught hold of him. He started planning step-by-step on how to nail down each and every cool category.

He started following more and more songs, started reading the hocus-pocus fiction books that everyone read. Tried to make his dumb hair look good (basically, even dumber).

He started using the “cool” and stupid language in front of everyone so that none of them could even think of him as an outdated personality.

He did everything, but he still felt left out. But he still tried, did everything he could. At last (huh! finally!), he gave up the pursuit of being cool and stayed as he used to.

Or let’s just say that he lived as time made him.

He got a haircut and started enjoying with his friends the way he liked. He started caring less about who thought what about him.

Then after a few months, he left school and started home schooling.

And the boy…(sob…sob…) was…me! (Sad piano music drops… 😢 😿)

(The emotional part… 👆)

That’s the point, I got agitated and failed that is why I switched back to normal.

What is the use of living if I can’t live without not actually being myself! It is useless!

My message to myself in the end was that using some modern and cool words like bro, dude, etc. won’t make me cool. Being me will make me more than cool.

It’ll make me more like me! Won’t that be great!

I’ve tried many cool antics. Like being cool by carrying a phone around with a little earpiece in it. Or just using my jackets in a more cool way or wearing hoodies.

Some people are cool just like that! They don’t need to get cool!

“WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?”

Someday or the other, I have to die.

Why waste my life with such stupid practices of not being myself!?

Wasting all of my life by struggling against it’s nature. I have to drop this practice!

I felt good, I felt at peace.

To never imitate…

And therefore, I decided to check with myself…

And let my decision be one of a kind…

and follow it!

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