"Before you graduate please define success for yourself. If you don't you will get caught up with what success means for the rest of the world."I keep her words near and dear to my heart…but I’ve never fully listened to them. When touching upon the impending sorrow most college grads feel upon being hung from a helicopter and dropped into an ice cold bucket of real life, I think my soror said it best.
I have recently become rather infatuated with celebrities, one in particular whom I will not name (Kim Kardashian), but only insofar as they are deemed superhuman. Now my most loyal readers already know that I consider myself irresistibly philosophical and given this there would be absolutely no reason why the eminence of seemingly normal people wouldn't be intriguing to me. I find it incredible that all it takes for un-famous people to second guess themselves is to see a celebrity who enjoys attention, accolades, neverending access to the world, and money. I realize that by implying that celebs aren’t the only ones that can be looked up to I am echoing the archaic ideal of teachers and doctors being recognized more (which really means being paid more).
Many may have realized this before but my epiphany is something which I really do pray helps me get over my obsession. We are the reason celebrities are the way they are. If there was no paparazzi, no cameras, no multi-million dollar salaries, no gossip sites/magazines/tabloids, and no envy...celebrities would cease to exist as the fuel to young aspiration that they are now. They are normal human beings in all ways. They get tired, they have bad hair days, they get pimples, they think about how they are getting old and must do something worthwhile. They overwork and underdeliver and sometimes the opposite. Although they seem to float carelessly thru life, they are forced to hide their humanness because somehow we've tagged 'impenetrable' onto the definition of 'celebrity'. If we weren’t in their faces all the time they wouldn’t feel it necessary to be on their A-game all the time. The only reason they are special and we compare ourselves to them is because they make drastically more money than a substantial part of the globe.
Celebrities look/are perfect because of money. If impoverished and middle-class people had enough money, they would look airbrushed all the time too. They would endorse products and lose weight at lightning speed and donate $1 million to Haiti Earthquake Relief. I never really thought of money as an enabler in this way and I know it sounds trite but money is really the only way to substantiate the label of celebrity. Well, duh. The substantiation of the celebrity label also shows in what types of work we think are deserving of mass sums of money. I do thought experiments on the regular (to determine level of possibility) and my current relish comes in the form of picturing how the world would be if we started ignoring celebs...also known as treating them and their human faults as human. Would Hollywood writher up and sink beneath the ocean?
When my soror elaborated her point she went on to say the once out of school you come into contact with a variety of people. She said she met people in their 40s who made less money/year than she did and they were struggling. She met people who hadn't even hit their 20s yet and they made millions a year, they were set for life. But what do we mean when we say "set for life"...you can buy whatever you want? or you can buy whatever you need? Both? Aren’t all people deserving of enough money to buy what they want/need? No, I am not communist.
So, given what my soror so brilliantly relayed to me it's quite unnatural for people to view their success outside of their financial standing and by what age they attain such financial standing. Money buys any and everything if you have enough of it. I don't know that I have a personalized answer for the question of whether money buys happiness. Is success seen as the attainment of a large sum of money in whatever one’s field/passion is? Some might say it’s the amount of change you can inflict with your passion but others might say money is needed in order to fully and freely pursue one’s passion. I have not figured out my definition of success yet.
I find myself wishing I had enough money to just be able to dabble in whatever I wished. I don’t really know what I’m good at or where my passions could lead me. It only makes sense that I would aspire to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible so that I could then use the money to try a whole bunch of shit and see what makes me happy!
Many may have realized this before but my epiphany is something which I really do pray helps me get over my obsession. We are the reason celebrities are the way they are. If there was no paparazzi, no cameras, no multi-million dollar salaries, no gossip sites/magazines/tabloids, and no envy...celebrities would cease to exist as the fuel to young aspiration that they are now. They are normal human beings in all ways. They get tired, they have bad hair days, they get pimples, they think about how they are getting old and must do something worthwhile. They overwork and underdeliver and sometimes the opposite. Although they seem to float carelessly thru life, they are forced to hide their humanness because somehow we've tagged 'impenetrable' onto the definition of 'celebrity'. If we weren’t in their faces all the time they wouldn’t feel it necessary to be on their A-game all the time. The only reason they are special and we compare ourselves to them is because they make drastically more money than a substantial part of the globe.
Celebrities look/are perfect because of money. If impoverished and middle-class people had enough money, they would look airbrushed all the time too. They would endorse products and lose weight at lightning speed and donate $1 million to Haiti Earthquake Relief. I never really thought of money as an enabler in this way and I know it sounds trite but money is really the only way to substantiate the label of celebrity. Well, duh. The substantiation of the celebrity label also shows in what types of work we think are deserving of mass sums of money. I do thought experiments on the regular (to determine level of possibility) and my current relish comes in the form of picturing how the world would be if we started ignoring celebs...also known as treating them and their human faults as human. Would Hollywood writher up and sink beneath the ocean?
When my soror elaborated her point she went on to say the once out of school you come into contact with a variety of people. She said she met people in their 40s who made less money/year than she did and they were struggling. She met people who hadn't even hit their 20s yet and they made millions a year, they were set for life. But what do we mean when we say "set for life"...you can buy whatever you want? or you can buy whatever you need? Both? Aren’t all people deserving of enough money to buy what they want/need? No, I am not communist.
So, given what my soror so brilliantly relayed to me it's quite unnatural for people to view their success outside of their financial standing and by what age they attain such financial standing. Money buys any and everything if you have enough of it. I don't know that I have a personalized answer for the question of whether money buys happiness. Is success seen as the attainment of a large sum of money in whatever one’s field/passion is? Some might say it’s the amount of change you can inflict with your passion but others might say money is needed in order to fully and freely pursue one’s passion. I have not figured out my definition of success yet.
I find myself wishing I had enough money to just be able to dabble in whatever I wished. I don’t really know what I’m good at or where my passions could lead me. It only makes sense that I would aspire to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible so that I could then use the money to try a whole bunch of shit and see what makes me happy!
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