Remember when you were growing up and wanted to be one of the cool kids at school? It didn’t matter what you really thought about things; you just wanted to be included and accepted. Being cool was so happening, but was also so fleeting since each generation has its own concept of what being cool means.
Coolness has no concrete definition. As a teenager, you try to determine its meaning so as to live within its confines. It might be reflected in fashion changes, musical trends, or hip slang. There seems to be some tangible personality trait about being cool, but at the same time it can be quite elusive. During your youth, cool kids could easily see that you either had it, or you just didn’t.
Researchers have tried to understand the paradoxes of what being cool means and why it seems so important. According to John C. Maher, who conducted a study of “cool kids” in Japan: “Cool has a brittle cultural logic. It is a residual code that has turned itself into an emergent code.” He further states that, according to this study, kids want to be included in the cool group while simultaneously thinking that they are uniquely independent. So is it that we want to be different while at the same time belonging to a popular group?
Take a few minutes to enjoy Sadhguru’s perspective on what being cool means.
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