Close your eyes before clicking play and imagine this: Four adults. Slow motion sprinting. Epic soundtrack music. Sea spray splashing up from our boots and shoes as we glide across the shoreline. St. Andrews glowing softly in the blue hour light just behind us. One stranger holding my iPhone like they are the cinematographer of an Oscar-worthy film. Light Scottish breeze. ZERO shame.
You can open them now, and you can watch the majesty that is the short film above.
I have a lot of weird ideas, some of them rise then fall and disappear before they have a chance at life. Some, some beautiful little nuggets, are met with the perfect conditions that marry timing, location, and feasibility, to make them possible. Those are my favorite ideas, those are my favorite days. This day, was one of those days, and once Sarah, Steven, Jax and I knew we were going to be spending the entire day and evening in St. Andrews, Scotland, that idea grew from a “what if” into a “we have to.”
I imagined what it’d be like if we recreated THE scene from Chariots of Fire, that iconic 1981 film with that opening scene and that Vangelis song, in the exact and precise spot they filmed the original some 40+ years before. It took a little convincing, and it took both asking and trusting a stranger on the beach to hold the camera at the right position (and not run off with my phone) for the right amount of time. It took not giving a single rat’s tiny ass if we looked ridiculous or not, if they would think I was completely off my proverbial rocker. Truth is, I don’t often ever care if this is what is thought when thoughts are aimed my way. Truth is, living this way has paved the way for the most magical life I have ever imagined. Truth is, it can for you, too. What I’ve come to learn of life is simple, and it is this:
Life is too short, and too important, to be cool all the time.
Hell, I’ll go one further, to be cool ever, at all, for any reason. To aim at this target, to call it your bullseye, is such a catastrophic waste of energy I almost feel guilty writing this essay at all. Still, I must, as it’s a lesson I think more need to learn, as I don’t like what I’ve been seeing over the years that fill the century we are now in.
I’ve been vocal for longer than I haven’t about the need to just live a life without boundaries, without ego, without concern about the petty nonsense that seems to ensnare so many people. I know I’m at an unfair advantage, as Autism certainly starts me at about the halfway point of the 100 yard dash when the gun goes off, but still, the lesson, the truth, remains the same.
As I mentioned, I’ve seen a pretty seismic shift in the overall energy coming from people since the turn of the century. As flawed and strange as the late 1990s were, there was this bizarre lack of seriousness and cynicism that seems to be de facto now. Perhaps the Cold War coming to an end, perhaps the post-Clinton era boom, the tech innovations rising at such a rapid rate and the eruption of dot.com optimism, perhaps the overall more earnest and whimsical nature of the media we were consuming (think Friends, think Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Boy Meets World, Saved by the Bell and so many others), and perhaps it was because the internets and social media hadn’t prioritized, rewarded, and even incentivized cynicism. Whatever the case, sincerity wasn’t mocked the way it is now.
Absent were the constant streams of “hot takes,” and Twitter/X threads; we were not always bombarded by bad news, we didn’t have computers in our pockets reminding us how low our stocks had fallen, how many people had died, and how someone’s failures or accidents become instantly meme-ified. I know cynicism did exist back then, I’m not looking back with glasses I painted rose-colored all myself, I know Nirvana existed, I know The Matrix came out and showed us all how we’re living in an awful computer simulation, and I know we all watched movies like Fight Club, American Beauty, and hell, even Seinfeld was massively popular. Still, it wasn’t the same, and I feel it now more than ever.
We can pick apart the reasons why to death, we can point fingers wherever we want, I won’t waste any more of your eyeball energy on that. I just will say, in my humblest opinion from where I sit—and I sit in a home with two teenagers, so I have a front row seat to it—I have seen silliness disappear, I have seen cynicism and skepticism explode, and I have seen generations emerging with absolutely no idea how to just let their guard down and be ridiculous, almost all of the time.
Now, it seems so much of our lives are spent trying to be taken seriously, trying not to commit the unforgivable sin of *gasp* embarrassing ourselves! *gasp* and just wanting everyone to think we fit in where they fit in. I’ve been screaming from the rooftops all the while that JOY, real, uninhibited, raw JOY, lives right on the other side of complete and total foolishness.
Silliness, it seems, is (or should be) sacred.
Silliness makes memories that stick. Silliness bonds people together, as there is no glue stronger than laughter, and I will fight to defend this. Silliness is how we once lived, how children (and autistics sometimes) still do. It’s the path to freedom that we aren’t told about enough, and so lose sight of.
I don’t know what that looks for you, and I won’t pretend I do. Maybe it’s being unafraid to dance in public more often, maybe it’s wearing the bright colors your eye goes to in the closet before only choosing the muted earth tones, maybe it’s singing off-key at your local karaoke bar. Maybe it’s trying something new, maybe it’s daring to fail, maybe, just maybe, it’s asking a stranger to film you running like a complete maniac on a beach in Scotland. Maybe.
Whatever it is, it’s up to you to decide what it looks like, what shape it takes. I just ask you to do so, to investigate your own ‘coolness’ and dissect it and pick it apart and reduce it to only the barest of bones it needs to survive. If it needs to survive at all. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you just stop trying to pretend being cool for anyone other than that quiet voice in your own head, things will change, and change for the better.
Life is too short to be cool all the time.
It always has been, but now every moment of perceived uncoolness is recorded, shared, and ridiculed. Now so many just seem to buy into the bullshit that sincerity is something to be avoided, criticized, and ostracized.
Here’s to authenticity and the balls to be bizarre, here’s to the audacity to be ostentatious. Here’s to those that stand out, stand up, and refuse to play the games we’re told we have to play. Here’s to the riff raff, the goofballs, the brave souls that dare to run across beaches or wear the silly clothes or sing off-key. Here’s to the silly, the sacredly silly.
Here’s to you, and to the life you’ll find right on the other side of your new found foolishness.
I’ll meet you there.
Within silliness
lives the answer to pure joy.
Let yourself find it.
