it’s cool to care.
being chill isn't the flex you think it is.
there was a whole era where the highest compliment you could get was:
she’s so chill.
nothing rattles her.
nothing excites her too much either.
someone compliments her on the street, she barely looks up. someone disappoints her, she shrugs. someone asks what she wants, she says, “whatever.”
no opinions. no reactions. no visible effort.
just muted, detached, floating through life like nothing could touch her.
we called that cool.
we called it mysterious.
we called it powerful.
it wasn’t.
it was numb, with better lighting.
and I know because I got very good at it.
I thought being low-maintenance made me powerful. I thought not asking for much meant nobody could accuse me of being too much. I could care privately, want quietly and act surprised when the life I never openly reached for didn’t arrive.
I wanted to be the girl who was fine either way.
fine if you texted. fine if you didn’t.
fine if I got the opportunity. fine if I was overlooked.
fine if the plan happened. fine if everyone forgot to include me.
I was not always fine.
I was just trying very hard to look like I was.
because being unbothered is not always a personality. sometimes it is what happens when caring hurt you once and you decided the safest possible move was to never want anything loudly again.
you can’t be disappointed if you never admit you were hopeful.
you can’t be rejected if you never ask.
you can’t look stupid trying if you make sure everyone knows you didn’t care in the first place.
very safe.
very small.
and somewhere along the way, we confused that smallness with strength.
caring is the actual flex
it’s cool to text back.
it’s cool to be excited. to make the reservation. to remember the birthday. to send someone the thing that made you think of them.
it’s cool to want your relationship to work and say that out loud instead of playing emotional chicken until somebody finally flinches.
I used to think being easy to love meant needing almost nothing.
no reassurance. no plans. no effort. no awkward conversations about what I actually wanted.
I thought the goal was to be so chill that nobody ever felt burdened by my feelings.
but there is nothing particularly intimate about making yourself impossible to disappoint.
it’s cool to say, “this matters to me.”
it’s cool to say, “I want you here.”
it’s cool to admit that you care how something turns out.
it’s cool to be good at your job. to know things. to come prepared. to have an opinion in the meeting before you find out which opinion will be the safest one to have.
it’s cool to care about how you look.
not because you are trying to win some invisible competition, but because you like catching yourself in a window and thinking:
oh. there she is.
it’s cool to care about your health when nobody is watching and there is no transformation photo coming. to go for the walk. drink the water. make the appointment. go to bed.
it’s cool to have a thing.
an obsession. a project. a goal. a weird niche interest you could talk about for forty minutes without taking a breath.
that is not cringe.
that is a pulse.
the people we are drawn to are rarely the people who care about nothing.
they are the people who are lit up by something.
they have a restaurant they need you to try. a book they won’t stop talking about. a business they are building. a hobby they are weirdly good at. a cause that matters to them. a colour they always wear. a life they are actively participating in.
they are specific.
you can feel them in the room.
purpose is what makes you legible to yourself
here’s the part that actually matters.
performing indifference doesn’t just make you harder for other people to know.
it makes you a stranger to yourself.
I spent a lot of time thinking I was adaptable.
easygoing. open-minded. happy to see what happened.
sometimes I was.
sometimes I was just waiting for someone else to decide what mattered so I could decide whether I was allowed to care about it too.
if you never let yourself want anything, you never find out what you want.
if you never express an opinion, you never find out what you think.
if you keep adjusting yourself to seem easy, agreeable and unaffected, eventually you become a smooth surface that everyone else’s preferences slide across.
and then one day you are thirty-something, sitting inside a life that technically works, wondering why none of it feels like you.
because you were so busy avoiding embarrassment that you also avoided aliveness.
purpose is the opposite of that.
purpose has friction.
it asks you to choose something. care about it. risk looking foolish. keep going even when nobody is clapping yet.
it doesn’t have to be one grand, cinematic calling.
purpose can be building something.
raising someone.
learning something.
loving someone properly.
taking care of your body.
making your home feel beautiful.
getting really, really good at one thing.
it is simply the thing you keep choosing.
and every time you choose it, you become a little more specific.
a little more recognizable to yourself.
a little more you.
and that’s where the positivity part comes in
positivity was never supposed to mean forcing a smile and pretending nothing bothers you.
it is not about lowering your expectations until life can no longer disappoint you.
it is not about needing less, wanting less or convincing yourself you are above it all.
real positivity is participation.
it is believing your life is worth caring about.
a person who cares about something has a reason to get up.
a person with opinions has a self.
a person going after something has direction.
and direction feels a hell of a lot better than drift.
I don’t think I became happier by becoming less needy, less emotional or less invested.
I became happier when I stopped treating those things like character flaws.
when I let myself want things.
when I admitted that some outcomes mattered more than others.
when I stopped pretending effort was embarrassing.
when I let people see me trying before I knew whether I would succeed.
you don’t become happier by becoming impossible to disappoint.
you become happier by building a life you are willing to care about.
by showing enthusiasm before you know whether it will be reciprocated.
by being the first person to say, “this matters to me.”
by allowing yourself to be seen trying.
yes, caring can hurt.
you might send the text and not get the answer you wanted. you might work hard and still fail. you might love something that eventually leaves you. you might tell the truth and feel exposed for a minute.
but the alternative is not peace.
the alternative is a life you were never fully inside of.
so no, I don’t want to be chill about everything.
I want to be devoted.
I want to care too much about the right things.
I want to love people properly. I want to make plans, have opinions, build things and get embarrassingly excited.
I want a life with fingerprints all over it.
let them see you care.
let them see you try.
let them see you want it.
the coolest person in the room isn’t the one pretending nothing matters.
it’s the one who obviously gives a shit.
xx
Steph
love this 🫶🏼
It IS💜 J’adore ça! Love IT!