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Is it Cool to Care?

Is it cool to care? A question posed by Sol Guy, co-founder of DCM and host of 4REAL, as he did his thing during the 2008 We Day. My automatic response would be HELLZ YEAH!!!

But let us pause and ponder for a moment.

So for those of you who don’t know, I lead a group at Maple Ridge Secondary called HOPE (Helping Other People Everywhere). A few weeks ago in late September, HOPE had the opportunity of hosting a school-wide assembly. None of us had ever planned something of this magnitude before, and what’s worse, we had less than three weeks to pull it off. I was in panic mode for those three weeks (I had two nightmares regarding the assembly).

But I was also kind of excited. It was a chance to really get HOPE on the map, and to increase the school’s awareness on our initiative with Free the Children to build a school in Kenya. But most importantly, I thought with my starry-eyed optimism, it was an opportunity to inspire my fellow students, perhaps bring them to tears with our awesomeness, and really stir them into standing up and taking action.

So let me first make this clear: the assembly went okay. I even had the cutest little grade 8 guy shyly tell me how much he had enjoyed it. God bless that kid.

But generally, the response was kind of – meh, you know? It was like everyone was thinking, “that was a pretty decent assembly” and just stopped there. I know it’s high school, but was I that clueless and naïve to have expected more?

I won’t segue into a bitter rant about apathy in the 21st century. So is it cool to care? I’m not an expert on cool, so I honestly don’t know. But it seems beside the point if you do care.

Standing up and taking action for what you believe in seems pretty cool to me. But we shouldn’t be afraid to be uncool.