What I loved about the first juice business that I started was that it made drinking juice a really cool thing to do. New York City is cool, the East Village is cool, and East 1st Street is especially cool.
It didn’t make that much difference to me whether or not everyone appreciated what I was doing. I just loved it and was very excited to be a part of it.
What is cool? Cool is compassionate. It’s inclusive. Cool is not snobby and cool is not grouchy, and cool is just gritty.
Cool people take risks. Cool people share with others. Cool people lead others to good things. Cool isn’t just dangerous, but it’s careful sometimes.
Cool is different. Cool is pleasant, but not everyone finds the same things pleasant. Therefore everyone’s not going to consider the same things to be cool. Cool to me is about what makes me happy. What actually makes it cool is that I’m doing my own thing.
Rock and roll is cool.
Ginger is spicy and it’s really good for you and that’s cool. And I want my ginger and I want my juice to feel cool because that’s just the way I am.
The good news is that I don’t particularly care if someone out there doesn’t like it. I don’t think I ever did care. I don’t know why I don’t have the type of sensibility to really be concerned whether or not you or anyone else thinks that I’m doing something great. I guess it’s because I have confidence that what I’m doing is good for me. I guess I believe in my heart that what I’m doing isn’t harming others.
The more I look into my past motivations I realize that for many years I struggled with needing to tell people what my successes were and what made me good. That was because I was insecure and that’s because that’s the feeling I had growing up. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t feel cool.
When I look back at pictures of myself I see that I was really cool. I just didn’t know that. And that’s sad to me. I missed a lot of precious years of my life feeling lower than low because of what people were telling me. And I’ll never get those years back.
The most important thing that I do in the public eye is to make sure that I come from a place of compassion. I must make sure that I don’t harm people or other things—doing that is stupid, and I don’t think stupid is cool.
I love being cool. It’s one of my vices and it’s one of my attachments.
The good news is I don’t really have to try. I’m not so aware of what other people think about whether or not I’m cool. I think that’s cool too.
So with that I’m going to end this story by saying that you should do the things in life that you want to. Just look at what you’re doing and make sure you’re not hurting others. If you pass that test, then dammit get out there and be yourself. If you want to have an earring in your nostril that connects to your eyelid, and you wanna wear your pants backwards and call yourself a goldfish, do it.
If you want to be a lawyer or a doctor and you wanna fit into that groove, do it. Do it your way, and be cool.