I've been on a blog-writing spree lately, for which I feel I should apologize on account of me nagging half of you guys to read it and subjecting you to wasting a good hour or so of your own time just to plow through my long, long, long, long, long rambling. I feel like I should apologize, but I won't. Generally speaking, I apologize too much. No time to change like the present, eh? I actually started writing this blog entry about two weeks ago, but thanks to the hectic moving and other recent developments at work and in my personal life, it's been a bit delayed, but here we go.
This latest rampage of optical abuse is brought to you by Romain Hefti, whose comment on Part 6 of Why I'm Awesome prompted me to explain a little something-something to the masses. And by masses I mean people who have the free time or low resistance against nagging to read it.
I feel like I need to define the word "awesome" here. You see, "awesome" in my mind is defined as something positive, attractive, memorable, unique, and that has an impact of some kind (i.e., "impressive"). Whether it's a person or an object, it has to include all of these qualities to be awesome, otherwise it falls into the not-so-awesome category of "cool" or "nifty" or "neat" or "meh" or "not very awesome at all."
"Awesome" is not quantifiable by anything beyond those traits. That is, it doesn't matter what it is that makes a person memorable, so long as they ARE memorable (and also meet all that other stuff listed up there).
This means that anyone with any kind of interest has the potential to be awesome. No matter what "subculture" you're from, no matter what you're interested in, you are probably still awesome because you are definitely all of those things to someone out there.
Therefore, if I play way too many computer games for it to be healthy and conducive to a productive lifestyle, that alone doesn't make me unawesome. Nor does, say, a frequent flexing of my mathematical muscles which, since those bygone years of high school, have fallen into disrepair and now suffer from saggy old-woman syndrome. If you're into cars, sports, finance, medicine, obscene amounts of porn, pocket protectors, or your Nintendo DS Lite (which I still lack because this country really blows balls sometimes), none of that particularly matters. It's not WHAT you're into that makes you awesome (or totally not awesome)…it's who you ARE that makes you awesome (or totally not awesome).
Let me break down what each of those traits means as far as my definition of awesome goes.
The one trait that most people tend to lack is their ability to be unique. With all things awesome, generally the most awesome of the awesome is that the most awesome thing is the one that is head-and-shoulders apart from the rest. Copycats are never quite as awesome; the more copycats there are, the less awesome each copycat is and, generally, this only highlights how unique the original act of awesome really was. Pioneers into the field of the never-done-before, well out of the range of simply "weird" or "quirky," will almost always satisfy the need to be unique. When it comes to people, then, the person who's going to satisfy this trait best is someone who is very much an individual, rather than a cookie-cutter type that identifies him or herself as being part of a subculture…rather than simply as being who they are. I don't mean that you cannot RELATE to these people, that's different. It's not that you have nothing in common or don't share any interests or that they are loners…none of this is true. Someone unique is someone who is very individual and someone whose personality you are not likely to meet ever again.
Next up you have to be attractive. Now, this qualifies as general attraction. Are you magnetic? Are the things you do magnetic? How well do you grab and hold someone's attention? Are you able to get other people interested in you (not for sexual or relationship purposes; what I mean is, are you able to intrigue people)? Your looks do not matter. Your ability to have mass amounts of sex does not matter. The only thing that matters is your general appeal to the people around you.
Memorable is also key, as plenty of cool things happen around us all the time but we generally forget them moments later because they just weren't THAT cool to begin with. As a person, you have to be remembered. If you've met someone before, they have to be able to remember you the next time you see them. The reason doesn't matter…they just remember who you are and at least something specific about you.
"Impressive" has been in quotes all this time because I don't mean it in the way that "wow, that was pretty cool." I mean it in the sense that something or someone left an impact. What separates "regular" awesome from "super" awesome is just how well someone leaves an impact on you. Did they change your life? Change the way you looked at something? Made you think about something deeper and more abstract? Got you interested in something new? The method in which they left the impression doesn't matter…that they had any impact at all means they meet this requirement of being awesome.
Positive is likely the most important of the bunch, as this means that you are not out to hurt anyone and are generally a contributor to the betterment of society as a whole. You don't go out of your way to screw someone over, and the things that you do don't involve coercing someone into doing something that they wouldn't otherwise do, and they don't directly or intentionally hurt someone. This means that if you're the kind of person that does some pretty memorable and "impressive" stuff but it comes at the direct cost of someone's well-being, you are probably not very awesome at all. This alone probably eliminates 70% of all potentially awesome people, because so many people just aren't awesome enough to know how to be all the things above without taking advantage of someone else.
Of course, all these traits vary depending on the individual trying to gauge the awesomosity. One person might find you very memorable while someone else goes "who what." You could've left an impact on one person but had zero effect on someone else. This is normal, as awesome is a purely subjective sort of concept.
What if, you wonder as you remember something I mentioned about how much people suck a few blogs ago, people just aren't paying attention to you and therefore you are not memorable…when you otherwise might have been, and thus awesome? Well my answer to that is that if that person doesn't remember much about anyone, there's a good chance they don't think anyone is particularly awesome…or maybe you just didn't leave enough of an impact to make them stand up and pay attention to you.
All these traits of awesome feed into one another and influence each other, but in different ways depending on the individual. Some traits directly boost one another as one is boosted, while others counteract and must be balanced. Which traits behave in which way relative to one another depend on the kind of person you are.
Generally speaking, because of this definition, very many people are awesome to me. It helps that I pay attention to what everyone says as closely as I can, and it helps that I naturally try to find something especially unique about them, so most people get two of the traits right off the bat. I don't always look for the good in people, being the awful cynic that I am, but generally speaking I don't assume the worst of people, either (just don't go around calling my best friend a pussy when he's lying on the ground, bleeding from his torso). Essentially, everyone I meet has my respect right from the get-go, regardless of rank or file, and it only goes up or down from there.
Man I just reread this thing and I wanna say that a drawn-out, logic-supported definition of awesome is slightly asinine. I wanna say it. But I won't. You can think it, though.
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