Dignity

It is what you are seeking

I will never forget the painful experience at age twelve of writing in a diary, long-since discarded, “I am cool!” This impotent adolescent plea, its assertion belying the claim, follows us into adulthood.

The term “cool” dominates our vernacular, though it is probably losing primacy in the lexicon.

What does it even mean?

It means: self-sustaining.

Coolness is not inextricably bound to fashion, looks, mannerisms, appearance, or risk-taking, though all of these have value. Popular media, starting in the mid-twentieth century, defined coolness by these traits in the same manner that Disney’s Snow White rendered us incapable of seeing in our mind’s eye anything other than the brunette animated princess when the centuries-old myth is evoked.

Back of coolness is another, older concept: dignity, from Latin dignus or worthy.

That—and that alone—dignity, is what my twelve-year-old self sought. And what you seek. I know because no life is exclusive.