Popular

The theme of "popular" was proposed by the oneminutewriter.blogspot.com. It caught my attention because I detest the word and its implications of pleasing other people just to build one's ego. How needy can people be that they seek to be popular to other people? I feel very independent and conformity doesn't appeal to me. I think of the word in terms of human relationships rather than how the word is used in relation to other choices such as which products we choose to buy or which books we choose to read or which movies we choose to view. It is just a word that indicates many have made the particular choice so that something becomes called "popular".

Of course as teenagers, everyone wanted to be "popular" but it was a shallow goal. It was a temporary setting and wanting to be included is normal, but doing things to make oneself fit in can become the road to ruin. Anytime we compromise our own values, we aren't admired but used. Being able to make choices freely is what our country is all about. We don't like predetermined decisions forced upon us.

When I was a teenager, I liked to observe the confident people who seemed to have a goal for the future in mind and pursued it to the exclusion of the need to "run with the popular crowd". I admired those people who kept their own counsel and chose their own path. Those were the days before the independent thinkers became the targets of the bullies of the "in crowd". There is great pressure today to conform and fit into the norm of the particular locale. It almost seems like an effort to hold people back so the oppressors don't have to compete. In my opinion, people worry too much about what other people think. 

The dreaded class reunions are a lesson to all of us that the "popular" crowd doesn't necessarily deal well with life beyond high school popularity pursuits. I am speaking in generalities based on my own life experiences and I prefer not to get into the specifics of various relationships from my own teenage years. It just isn't even important enough to me to even recount those incidents. Needless to say, I never felt it necessary to pursue the concept of being "popular". I make my own choices for whatever reasons seem right to me, not because someone has determined that it is the "popular" choice. I have been accused of not being a "team player" and that is probably true. I march to my own drummer.