COOL IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

Thoughts on an cool, hot and other external pursuits

“Coolness, or being cool, is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, and style that is generally admired. Because of the varied and changing interpretation of what is considered cool, as well as its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning.”

From Wikipedia.

I’ve thought about cool a lot over the years, since it is a staple of the pop culture world I’ve much of my adult life moving through. Here at the first of a few brief essays on it and affilitated obessions.

Cool puts you at the center of any party - you become the planet that everyone revolves around. Money, fame, and looks can give you entry to cool, but they are not the ultimate definer. To some degree certain people are cool from something deep inside them and couldn’t change if they wanted to. But, for most of us, it’s a series of gestures to be adopted, a way of having the world view you. As such, it is an mostly external quality subject to deterioration and faddishness.

Much of our highly adolescent American culture is based on the idea that the reckless behavior of the young is romantic, fun, and even commendable. Instead, I now believe that the bad decisions of your 20s and ‘30s become debts you pay in your 50s and 60s. Whether it is the memory of violence, of abusing lovers or drugs, or merely being mean and arrogant when it was unnecessary and cruel, there is a weight that you carry that grows heavier with each passing year. It can weigh on you so heavy that it causes physical and mental harm. So, living fast when you’re young – as exciting pop songs and Hollywood movies have made it seem – is a road to heartbreak (for you and your loved ones), lasting psyscic scars, and a regret filled middle-aged. This idea of perpetual adolescence is a trap perpetuated through the elevation of cool.

I have several friends who died of cool. When I suggest they died of cool, I probably should be more precise and say they died in the pursuit of it. Now, I will be even more granular and point out that there’s “cool” and there’s “hot,” conditions that sometimes overlap. Any number of things can make you “hot.” You primarily become “hot” from a big public event or a series of them in a calendar year. Now this heat doesn’t last. It its predicated on a sequence of unrepeatable events that, the deluded, believe will be a constant.

Cool is more enduring than hotness, since it’s based more on personal style in movement, dress, or language. Anybody can get hot, but not everyone is gonna be cool. People who become hot are often labeled cool, but it’s a short-term designation. Those who are perceptive about the difference and know how fleeting their link to “cool” is, can become obsessed with staying “hot” to the point they become parodies of themselves (overdoing it until they become a joke) or attaching themselves to whatever the latest “hot” thing is – be it a cultural trend or a particular woman or man – trying to maintain their coolness by association.

Chasing hotness to remain cool is a loser’s game. The beauty of being a grown ass man is that you’ve seen innumerable waves of hotness come and go and you’ve seen people of undeniable cool become as uncool as last season’s flip flops. I’ve observed the more you escape from the pursuit of cool, the cooler you become.

After all, cool is a four letter word.