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When our children were growing into their teens, a friend discovered the term “cool,” and wanted to know if our sons knew what it meant. He then explained that it was the same as “hot.”
Cool drives the culture today. Everybody wants to be cool. Cool is so important that people will do anything to be it, pay any price to have it and give up everything for it. The pursuit of cool is most important to those who dream of it.
Well, what is cool? A brief research shed some light on this most-important-of-all topic.
Cool is:
- To be neat, "awesome", swell
- To always do the right thing
- To flow through life with grace and ease
- To be popular, like in a social hierarchy
- To be hip, fashionable
- To be relaxed
- To be in style
Cool is always changing, so it is possible that the above definitions are not cool anymore. The only constant of cool is that it remains the life-consuming attraction that supersedes everything else in life. You may be rich, smart and pretty, but if you are not cool, you may very well be the loneliest person on the planet.
To stay cool you cannot wander too far off its winding road, for what is cool today may be old cool tomorrow - the worst nightmare of cool addicts. However, as it goes with cool, old cool can become cool again without prior notice. I found it fascinating years ago, when my dad’s old ties became hip again and ruled the fashion waves for another decade. The very nature of cool is the element of surprise, its ability to keep on changing and taking on unexpected forms. Continuous change seems to be the power by which cool sustains itself. Your fortunes may change overnight if you are too slow with catching up.
Cool has no recognized leader, yet it boasts a loyal following second to none in the world. Cool tolerates no competition. Everything that dares to compete with it is simply assigned a lower spot on the schedule: none of cool’s followers ever want to be caught in an activity that is not cool. But this mesmerizing attraction of cool can be a fatal one as it has some nasty secrets that it doesn’t want its followers to know about.
Hidden behind its fancy glow are some cruel thieves, robbers and destroyers of dreams. Talents and gifts that were deposited in some hearts remain undeveloped and dormant as their owners devote their lives and times to be followers instead of innovators and leaders. Cool blinds its following to its way of dropping them when it is cool to do so, leaving them empty and lonely with lives fallen too far behind to catch up.
Cool caters to our carnal side only because it is not cool to think of spirituality. The dangers hidden in this mind-set cannot be overstated: cool’s destiny is hot, burning with disappointment and regret. To all cool junkies, set aside the kool-aid and take a good look at where you are heading. Popularity has no real winners, but careful consideration of purpose and planning with dreams shape the future of those who dare to take the road less travelled. The road that you are travelling on may not lead to your desired destiny.
The issues of life flow from the heart (See Proverbs 4:23), not acceptance by the crowd. Keeping your heart with all diligence is the way of winners. Carve a bright tomorrow for yourself by raising the level of your spiritual intelligence today. Look at the world around you: the way of “everybody does it” is not the way of those who rise to the top. The only difference between cool and fool is an “F,” and who wants to define his life by the failing grade of F?
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13,14
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