Most of you would be embarrassed to go into a respectable restaurant wearing a hat like this. My friends and I award prizes for stuff like this. This is my friend Bret at this past year's Crazy Hat Night, which happened to be the 10th year in a row that we've done this. Bret is not ashamed. He embraces the fact that most people will laugh at him and mock him. A lot of people spend their lives paralyzed by what others may or may not think.
How can we change the world when the world is forever changing us?
Here is a picture of my friend Sean, trying his hardest to change the world.
Total loser, right? Spent hours hot glueing plasticwear together to form a Crazy Hat, so he could look like an idiot in front of a bunch of normal people. Normal people who most likely will wonder to themselves... why would he do this?
It's not for breast cancer awareness. It's not for AIDS relief, or Children's Hospital, although those are obviously all great causes for action. This type of behavior is to raise awareness about ourselves. We need to be able to live our lives free from the bondage of hoping everybody will think we are cool.
It's good for us to do things occasionally that remind us that we aren't above being laughed at, or even looked down upon. It will grow our humility.
Do something that will make you look foolish on purpose. It might change the world.
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4 comments:
what's funny is that we still care about what others think, but those "others" are our close friends rather than the public or a foreign group we're trying to fit into. for example, if i wear a perfectly normal hat around town, no one will stare or laugh. but if i wore the same hat to crazy hat night with no modifications, i would be made fun of, whether to my face or behind it, because no effort went into it. so it's all about what group you're trying to fit into...we just happen to have friends that shun mainstream tastes and embrace tastes that are considered unique or quirky.
by the way, i haven't really had time to watch any of the movies you've assigned, but at some point i still want to try. maybe if i get lucky, you'll suggest a movie that i already own. ;)
This is correct, but there is a reason we don't have crazy hat night at one of our houses just for our enjoyment (besides tradition). I take seriously the notion that we can't take ourselves too seriously. Doing something ridiculous in front of people who appreciate it makes it more fun for us. Doing it at Eat n' Park is the part that grows our humility.
Sean will remember of course, but for those of you who don't know... these same friends and I (except for Jeremiah and Chad who were too cool) did a dance in the hallway as a group every stinkin' day of our Junior year of Highschool. People walked by us and called us names and made fun of us something fierce. Our potential popularity (Chris never really had any of this) went down the tubes. This made some people stop and think about why we would do this to ourselves. Some actually joined us in the middle of the year.
I will never forget the one day that everybody else had a trip they went on, and I was the only one in the group who was able to do the dance... alone. we're talking about a dance that lasts for 2 minutes plus, not some 2 second shaking of a booty. I wasn't fitting into any group during that dance, b/c there was nobody around who appreciated it. It took discipline for me to go through with it.
The reason why I did it is because I don't ever want to place value in something that has no value. My popularity had no value. None. By letting my actions be dictated by it would be granting it power over me. I didn't want to do the dance that day. Which is why I had to do it.
If you're reading this post and wondering what on earth it has to do with the media, I will break the suspense. In some ways, the media is the biggest form of peer pressure we've got. The public studies famous people more than the most popular person in their school. In fact, a lot of times the most popular person is somebody who embodies the qualities of somebody famous. Why are people famous? Because they're on TV, they're in movies... they become an authority.
Celebrities effect us from fashion trends to evaluating our self worth.
They don't need to have that authority, they haven't earned it. The news reporters haven't earned it. The talk show hosts haven't earned it. Letting these things change the way you think/behave without good cause is giving value to something that has no value. Barbie doesn't even have the capability of thinking about herself or loving herself. So how does she have the power to make girls who don't look like her hate themselves? Because they don't know what is truly valuable.
you know what's weird? you'll get a kick out of this, but bill and i have often discussed how beer is like music. in the music world (and movie world) you've got these mainstream artists, with all the money, that everyone likes, but anyone with 'good' taste considers lacking. Where the real quality is, is the world financially in the the middle, and in some cases at the bottom, where people have enough money to pursue their dream, and they churn out this stuff that really pushes boundaries and stirs you inside. Well the same exact statement can be made of the beer world, as nerdy and yuppie as it is to say (read it again and think of beer instead of music). so anyway, i guess that's loosely related to the topic at hand.
the moral? say no to drugs!
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