cool

Life is like Halloween night. Everyone walks around with a pre-decided idea of who they want to be. They hope that if their costume is good enough they will get extra candy. At the same time is you see someone with a crappy costume you automatically label them not as good as you. In life we try to show our costume the best we can without showing that it is a costume. But if you spend all day wearing a costume eventually you forget what you look like. The majority of our personality is what we think people will respond positively to, not who we really are.
“I’m going to lose my cool!”We have all heard it before; usually said by a parent to stop whatever bratty thing you happen to be doing at the moment. But this is more than just a threatening warning; it also holds the definition of cool. When someone loses their cool they get angry, they lose their calmness. So to be cool is to be calm and collected. These days there is a constant pressure to be cool. The cool kids are the popular kids. This results in a giant hypocrisy. The quest for cool has caused people to put lots of effort into making life look effortless. Lets take the example of little Jimmy. Little Jimmy is a nice kid with a good sense of humor, but he is afraid of heights. He lives in a small town so he was able to keep this a secret, until he is invited to the local like to go cliff jumping. He soon finds himself at the top of a cliff looking at a 20 foot drop into dark waters. Little Jimmy couldn’t admit he was afraid of heights because then he wouldn’t be calm. But since he acted like we wasn’t afraid of heights he finds himself looking off the edge of the cliff. Sorry Jimmy, should have acted like cliff jumping was boring.
When we watch TV we all have that one character we like. “Oh I like Pierce, he’s funny”. On T.V. each character that has a certain trait that everything they do reinforces. In our life we try to emulate that. We have this idea of who we want to be and we try to play that role in every situation. If we are trying to play the role of the bad boy, you might light up a cigarette in detention. We do this because, just like the characters on tv, we all have certain types of people that we like. The bad boy will have a group of friends at union square who give him high fives when he tells them how he was smoking in detention. We take on a certain persona to please a certain group of people. This can happen on a small level such as high school clicks, but this is most clearly seen in the presidential elections. Both candidates take on a persona thinking it’s the one the American people want to see. We decided what group we want to be part of than act a certain way so they will like us.
I stood in Union Square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves were not that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But I was not starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waiting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You did not sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It uses to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo; you did not get cool point because you had a Kio fish or a dragon. You throw away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who wants to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimate trick. If I want to be a hippie and I get the peace sign on my arm. Since I am stuck with it people assume I’m a hardcore hippie. I do not even have to open my mouth.

Tattoos

I stood in union square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves werent that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But i wasnt starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waitting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You didnt sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It use to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo, you didnt get cool point because you had a koi fish or a dragon. You through away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who want to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimet trick. If i wanna be a hippie and i get the peace sighn on my arm. Since im stuck with it people assume im a hardcore hippie. I dont even have to open my mouth.