Popularity That Counts

Mitch Miller

It seems that the great desire among the young is to be popular. And once they achieve popularity, they want to keep it, improve on it, and expand it.

Those are the years when you should be finding out who you are and what you stand for. But the desire to be popular can force you into looking and acting like everyone else. You can lose yourself in a sea of identical hairstyles and thought styles.

I was forced to think about popularity not too long ago in a talk I had with my daughter. Margy had to change schools when my busy work schedule made it necessary for me to move houses. I suppose that, for a girl in her teens, entering a new school is about as easy as spending a season alone in the tropical jungles. At least that's how Margy found it at first. However, as the school year drew to a close, one student after another came to her. All told her how much they liked her now that they knew her. They said they would have liked to be friends sooner. Why, they wanted to know, hadn't Margy let them know earlier in the school year what she was really like?

Why, Margy asked me with some concern, hadn't she made all those friends sooner? Why had it taken them so long to get to know her and like her?

I told Margy that I would have been more concerned if she had been an instant social success in her new school. That, to me, would have been proof that she had betrayed her true self in order to become popular. Nobody can please everyone. If you try to do so, you will find values as lasting as soap bubbles blown into the air. The people with whom you ought to be friends will find you in good time. And you will find them. Sometimes young people try to force friendships into bloom by opening their innermost thoughts to people they have just met. Such friendships are the least likely to last. What's the hurry? If you have five really close friends in your lifetime, you will be doing very well.

I hear many parents complaining that the young are Rebelling. I wish they were. But take a good look at the present rebellion. It seems that teenagers and those in their early twenties are all taking the same way of showing that they disagree with their parents. Instead of striking out boldly on their own, most of them are clutching at one another's hands for reassurance.

They claim they want to dress as they please. But they all wear the same clothes. They set off in new directions in music. But somehow they all end up listening to the same record. Their reason for thinking or acting in a certain way is that the crowd is doing it. They have come out of their cocoon—into a larger cocoon.

I know that it has become harder and harder for a young person to stand up against the popularity wave and to go his or her own way. Our way of life makes a young nonconformist stand out like a Martian. Industry has firmly carved out a young market. These days every member of the younger generation can learn from the advertisements what he or she should have and be. And many of today's parents have come to award high marks for the popularity of their children. All this adds up to a great barrier for the young person who wants to find his or her own path. 9 But the barrier is worth climbing over. The path is worth following. You may want to listen to classical music instead of going to a party. You may want to collect rocks when everyone else is collecting records. You may have some thoughts that you don't care to share at once with your classmates. Well, go to it. Find yourself. Be yourself. Popularity will come—with the people who respect you for who you are. That's the only kind of popularity that really counts.