WHAT IS IT ABOUT FAME?

     Fame is as fleeting and illusory as the mist. So what is it about the idea of being famous that appeals to us... if it appeals to us? Maybe we think that if we're famous, we can somehow cheat death and live on and on "in posterity." Or perhaps we want to make an irretrievable impact on the world to prove our importance in it, and our worth. We feel that we must be important somehow, and we want the world to give us external validation. And we are important, but not in the way we think. We are important to the people we touch with our lives. We are teachers and students. We share lessons with our family and friends, the people we work with, and those we encounter by chance.
     Perhaps we think if we were famous we would be properly loved; we would be properly appreciated and acknowledged. We would have fans! But we would also be a source of hatred, and jealousy, and righteous judgment. Living famous, I imagine, is no different than living without fame. It's all living in the end. All the same challenges must inevitably present themselves, with fear and uncertainty topping the list. Once we become famous, we can suddenly lose our fame, and then who will we be? It's all about what we identify ourselves with in the end. Are we identified by external things, or by something deep and vast within us?
     The truth is that whatever we have "always wanted to be," the likelihood is that we already are. It's not out there in the future somewhere. We are writers if we write. We are dancers if we dance. We are comedians if we make people laugh. It's our tendency to slap conditions on success the same way we slap conditions on love- that it has to look a particular way and be validated by the world in some particular way. But it doesn't. We are already valid simply because we exist. It really doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. We have nothing to prove in the end. We have only to be.

I drop all of the conditions I place on my self-worth, and find a way to be ok with myself just the way I am.