There Is No Spoon

When I was about 8 years old, there were only two “cool” clothing stores in Hawaii: Town and Country Surf Designs and Hawaiian Island Creations. Now days, the equivalent would be Reuhl or Abercrombie & Fitch.

At the time, I was scared to go into those stores because I thought that I wasn’t cool enough to walk in. I was afraid one of the workers would look at me and “hey, you’re not cool enough to be here; get out!”

This crazy idea continued throughout my high school career. It manifested into things like I was scared to wear a cool pair of sunglasses I bought, I was scared to wear a Stussy hat someone gave to me, and I even totally dismiss taking French because I thought “only cool kids are allowed to take French.” I thought people would see me do these things and make fun of me.

Eventually I stopped caring. I told myself “I don’t care what the cool people thought of me; I’m going to do what I want to do.” I came to the realization that I didn’t care what they cool kids thought. So I walked into T and C and HIC without worrying about getting kicked out.

Later, I grew into the belief that “I don’t care what people think, but if they did, I know that NOW, I’m cool enough to be here.” And that helped me walk into the stores with confidence.

Now, I realized that all of this was just in my head--it never existed. As The Matrix put it “There is no spoon.” No “cool” kid, even if one existed, would ever say “you’re not cool enough.” No store employee would ever say “get out!” And most of all, there was no such thing as the cool barrier I needed to cross to be entitled to walk into the store.

Everything about being cool enough never existed. I was being held back by my own beliefs. The same beliefs that were imposed upon me by the same damn store that wanted to sell me clothes, which I actually wanted to buy, because they would give me better cool status, so I could be cool enough to actually wear them.

There is no spoon.