Dear Eyeball,
How do I be cool? I feel like everyone else knows how to act except me. I overthink how I walk, how I talk, what I wear, and what people think of me. I try to seem relaxed, but it always feels fake, and then I go home and replay everything I said until I feel sick.
I just want to fit in without pretending to be someone I’m not. I want to stop feeling so awkward all the time, but I don’t know how.
Jasper R., 17 — Geelong, VIC
Hello Jasper Carrot,
Believe it or not, this is one of the most common questions I get from people your age. And honestly, who can blame you? You live in a modern world where everything seems to be about image. The human ego phenomenon is basically a singularity of image — nothing more. So in a sense, image is all you’ve got, and it’s okay to want to take care of it. It’s just that, as with many things, humans grab the wrong end of the shit-stick and then wonder why their fingers don’t smell like cinnamon pie. Whatever that means.
A young man named Archie from Leicester, England, wrote to me once and said he was in love with a French exchange student named Philippe. Archie told me he’d never considered himself gay and had only been attracted to girls in his class. I asked him what he liked about Philippe. It wasn’t his thick head of luscious European hair. It wasn’t his thin, tanned, bony jawline. It wasn’t really physical at all. Archie told me it was his energy.
And this is where kids often make their biggest mistake — trying to follow some checklist of what is considered cool. They wear the “right” clothes, the “right” shoes, get the “right” haircut. Then they try to project to others that they listen to the right music or watch the cool films, but they do it by bragging about it out loud. This lack of awareness, and the subsequent boasting about their attempts at cool, comes across to genuinely cool people as… well, a bizarre ego performance. And it’s not because cool people think that behaviour is uncool — it’s because they don’t ever consider the concepts of cool or uncool in the first place.
The basis of cool is this: you don’t consider the concept of being cool.
Someone like Philippe, standing there listening to Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud, smoking his dried zebra-faeces cigarettes, wearing his string vest and worn-out tennis shoes, is making choices based on what he likes. He likes soft, sophisticated jazz. He likes the odour of the African savanna. He likes feeling the bones of his feet on hard bitumen. He doesn’t need to consult anyone on how to behave because he is absolutely certain of who he is. People’s opinions simply don’t matter to him.
On the other hand, Jasper, people like you are always looking around for cues from society on how to act. This is why, before you wrote this letter, you probably asked Google how to be cool and started making a checklist: wear this, say this, listen to this, eat this. It’s pathetic.
You will never be truly cool while you are desperate for others to see you a certain way. This is the wrong end of the shit-stick. It’s a bit like jealousy — the ugliest emotion — which is designed to pull someone closer but inevitably pushes them away. Trying to be cool is designed to make you cool, but it ends up making you look like a desperate idiot.
So you need to stop trying to be cool. Find out what you want to do and who you want to be. Follow those things with absolute authenticity and you’ll be halfway there.
Authenticity is the fuel that forms the basis of the fire of cool. It’s ignited by the spark of altruism.
In young-person situations like school (and plenty of older-person situations too), people who desperately want to fit in tend to bully or reject those who don’t fit into their delusional idea of what “cool” is. They do this to assert their own place within the cool group — a group within which they are secretly totally unsure of their place.
This rejection of the “uncool” kid asserts the cool group by holding someone up in opposition. It makes them feel like they’re actually cool. It’s like being given a glass of goat urine for breakfast — when someone finally hands you a glass of plain water, it tastes like the finest champagne. Everything is relative.
Someone who is truly cool does not need to reject anyone. They don’t have this duality of cool and uncool. They treat the so-called uncool with the same respect and dignity as everyone else. There’s a care for beings that comes naturally to truly cool people. There’s a charisma born from presence and awareness. It’s because fewer ideas are cluttering the mind. There’s a clarity that doesn’t separate cool from uncool.
So, to answer your question, Jasper Carrot — and I hope you understand what the hell I am talking about here — how to be cool?
It’s easy.
Forget about being cool.
Just find your authenticity.
And follow that with total confidence.
Good luck, my friend.
Jasper, sweetheart… you’re not uncool. You’re just aware.
And awareness at 17 feels like having your headlights on full beam in a quiet street — everything looks too bright, too intense, too embarrassing.
Here’s the secret no one told you:
Cool people aren’t calm.
They’re just not busy pretending.
Most of the kids you think are “naturally cool” are acting just as hard as you are — they’re just better at hiding the panic. Half of them go home and cry into a half-eaten burrito because someone laughed at their haircut.
The Eyeball’s right about one thing though:
authenticity is the engine.
But don’t make “authenticity” another performance. You don’t have to overhaul your personality. Just start small:
Like what you actually like.
Don’t explain your choices.
Don’t apologise for existing.
And when you don’t know how to act… breathe, soften your shoulders, and let the moment be clumsy.
Clumsy is human.
Human is cool.
And one more thing — from someone who definitely wasn’t cool at 17:
Your people will recognise you.
Probably not this year.
But soon.
When they do, you won’t have to try anymore.
— Lyra
Got something strange, shameful, beautiful, messy, or too human for the group chat?
Slip it through the door: transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com
Step into The Underlight - If the shadows feel familiar, come inside — where curiosity is currency, honesty burns, and the parts you hide finally get a room of their own.
