Are you "COOL" ?!!!

It’s not WMD. It’s definitely not 911 or e-mail or Internet. The award for the ”Word” of the decade goes to the coolest word in the new-age lexicon, ’Cool’. From a non-existent eighties to limited edition usage in early 90’s,”Cool” has made a big splash in late nineties and is here to stay. Being cool; wearing Cool; acting cool; walking cool; even spelling cool in a “kewl” way; it has slowly permeated every aspect of our life and suddenly become an important factor in our daily decision making process. Even Friends are chosen based on their “Cool-Quotient”.

What is being cool? I know being polite (yeah right!), obedient (what difference does it make between one and ten lies?), caring, lovable, honorable, confident, etc. But no one ever taught me how to be cool? Perhaps it is one of those things you figure it out yourself (like Love, Sex, Marriage). All of us use it in many different contexts. ”Cool! That’s awesome!”, ”That’s a cool dress” ,”She is Cool”, ”I am cool”, ”The Manager is very un-cool”. What do we mean by it?

When you say “That’s a cool dress”, do you mean, “I am surprised you would dare to wear that crap? “ or “You don’t look that weird that would stop me from hanging out with you?”. Or are you are saying it’s a nice dress. But if you felt it was nice you would have used the word nice. Why “Cool”? Perhaps it was ‘different’ not nice. So if something is different, is it Cool? Now I am very un-cool trying to figure this thing out and worse, sweat about it. My coffee-break mate was more candid about his reason for using it. He said he is just too tired of saying ‘Ok’ all the time. He said Cool kinda sounds, you guessed it, cool.

The problem with being cool or acting cool is that no one really knows what it really means because it’s very subjective. What you think is cool might be plain stupid to someone else. After intense analysis and research of personal cool-compliments, my definition of being cool is having the “Could care less” attitude!
“Are you disappointed that you were left out of team?”
“Cool! I could care less!”

“Are you hurt that you were not invited? “
“Cool! I could care less!”

“Are you not worried about piercing your ear and tattooing your forearm? “
“Cool! I could care less”

The moment you decide to do what you want to do without worrying about other’s approval, you display Confidence; Certitude; Assuredness; Attitude; in other words, ”You are Cool”. Being cool is being comfortable in your own skin. It’s not the outfit; it’s the attitude in the outfit!