Please Support - Ride for the child

This week I came across a website which relays the story of two single friends who dated for forty days and blogged about their experience. The actual dating took part in March 2013 so I’m gutted I wasn’t one of the 5 million people that followed it ‘live’. It is potentially one of the most interesting websites I have ever encountered. I suggest you find a spare hour and read the website from start to finish, It’s a real roller coaster ride and I guarantee you will love it!

I was especially interested in the story because I could relate to the opinions of both the friends. On one hand I can become completely obsessed and overenthusiastic about stuff, but on the other hand I can be uncaring, indecisive and unpredictable. Anyway the thing that really captured my attention was the fact that I thought that these two people were quite cool, which brings me nicely onto the definition of cool…

I met a girl a few years back when I had started university and I will never forget the time she assured me that I was not cool. I was astounded by this and couldn’t really understand her logic. However I look back on that experience now and she was right, I most definitely wasn’t cool. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been cool.

My definition of cool has changed somewhat over the years and this article made me cast my mind back to the different stages of coolness.

Teenage years

Being cool at school meant that you had lots of friends and were well-liked amongst people, this might be because of a skill or perhaps you were “ard”(a good fighter). In my eyes those who were clever at school were not cool! At this age I think parents have a major influence on their children’s coolness and those people who were allowed to stay out late, or have their friends around often were often the coolest.

Adolescence

Things started to change at this point and I guess it all came down to the career path that was chosen. I was a bit of a jack the lad, so cool to me was getting hammered, smoking, clubbing and ‘pulling’ women. People who could drink a lot or people who had all the latest designer clothes were cool. Those who were good at football or played for the town team. I was never really constantly exposed to people who were clever, professional or career driven so none of those things were included in my cool criteria.

Post university

Cool to me now is someone that’s educated and successful. Someone that’s cultured and knowledgable. People that are successful in their careers solely because they’re intelligent or good at what they do. People who are trendy, but don’t necessarily follow trends and have their own unique style. People who are good at making conversation and fun to be around. People who are good at cooking or excel at pub quizzes.

I guess there are lots of things that make people cool and they can all be different and unrelated to one another. You sometimes just meet people and they omit coolness for one reason or another.

The point of this article is to outline what i think is cool now, was completely uncool as I was growing up. It’s crazy how much my thoughts and opinions have drastically changed along with my life life experiences. I often wonder had I not gone to university what would I being doing now, and what would be my definition of cool. After all… you can only aspire to be things that are cool.

Another nonsensical article from me but it really provoked some thoughts.