When I was a boy, I determined that the best, most desirable quality I could possess was to be cool. That word had only recently entered the popular vernacular, largely, as far as I could tell, thanks to the character of Arthur Fonzarelli, The Fonz, portrayed by Henry Winkler in the 70’s sitcom Happy Days. I didn’t want to be The Fonz, but lord did I want to be cool. To be handsome or a good athlete or smart seemed attainable and commonplace. Coolness, however–that confidence born not of skill or achievement but simply not caring what others thought of you–was elusive.
I spent a lot of time wondering what other people thought of me. It seemed important for reasons I couldn’t possibly articulate. Plus, I was very emotional, prone to outbursts and melodrama. A cool guy keeps it together. So, I knew I wasn’t cool.
But then again, as I looked around me, I couldn’t find a living example of coolness in my world. Sometimes I’d see a guy, usually someone older than I, who seemed to have found his inner Fonz. Then I’d meet him, get to know him a little, and I’d learn he was just a person, with all the usual human strengths and weaknesses, doubts and desires.
I admit I did not think of girls or young women as being cool, though I suspect that’s because I knew on some level that I could not happily be with someone who was emotionally inscrutable. She didn’t have to care what I thought of her–in fact, best if she didn’t–but I had to know what she was feeling more or less at all times. So much of manhood seemed to be about keeping your emotions in check. It was artificial and fatiguing. How nice to spend time with someone not saddled with that impossible requirement.
Ten years ago, I had the good fortune to interview Henry Winkler when he was promoting a Young Adult series he co-authored about a teenager with dyslexia, a condition with which the actor had struggled all of his life. Winkler was a very sweet, open, and earnest man, and nothing at all like his iconic character. In fact, he had based The Fonz on Sylvester Stalone, whom he met while shooting The Lords of Flatbush.
This seemed perfect to me, that the character who defined cool for a generation was portrayed by an actor imitating someone he thought was cool. I’ll bet if you asked him, Stallone didn’t feel particularly cool. No one does. I know this because I have managed, with much practice, to spend very little time worrying about what people think about me. I didn’t practice this to be cool, however; I did so to be happy.
The first thing I have to do if I want to be a good writer, or a good husband, or father or friend or absolutely anything, is to quit wondering what other people think of me. This wasn’t easy at first because I wanted people to like what I wrote as much as I wanted them to like me. Wondering and worrying about what people thought of me seemed like the most efficient way to address this. It wasn’t. It made writing and kindness and just about everything hard, trying as I was to hit a target I couldn’t see.
I did, however, have to care about something, and I found it much more useful to pay attention not to whether people liked me, but who I liked; not whether people liked what I wrote, but what I liked to write. I don’t know if this makes me cool or not, but it’s a lot less stressful, and a lot more productive. Also, I have noticed that what I think about other people changes constantly. Whether I approve or disapprove can flip from one to the other and then back again with a single word. I wouldn’t advise anyone to pay much attention to it. It would be like trying to follow the flight pattern of a panicky house fly.
By the way, the most creative moment in every day’s writing is not when the words are coming fast, but before they come, when you’re sitting in a kind of holy silence, deliberately not thinking anything. That’s where everything good starts, the open portal through which every new idea flows. It’s hard to know sometimes what I really am, but the closest I come is that quiet stillness, not a thinker but a receiver of thoughts, cool or otherwise.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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