One of the real bummers about transitioning from a hopeful 8-year-old kid to a statistically unexceptional adult for 99.99% of us is at some point we have the realization that we never became famous. This is another way of saying we weren’t good enough at anything for most people to notice, or we never got around to making a sex tape. It’s usually one of those.
Disclaimer: Mrs. Burrito Bowl is in charge of where commas and swear words should and should not go. Since we are now in full control of a six week old baby, and up to this point our largest responsibility has been house plants, she has not had the chance to proofread this post. Add or subtract your own commas as you, wish. Back to the article.
Our entire childhood of imagining ourselves to be main characters on the world stage turned out to be nothing more than fleeting thoughts for the vast majority of us. Most of us spent our childhood imagining ourselves in the central roles, most likely giving zero imagination time to whatever career we actually have as adults.
If you think about it for very long it’s almost as if our entire adult lives are nothing more than one big failure of continually letting down our childhood self.
But there’s good news—at least we’ll eventually die and everyone will forget our shame.
More good news—kids are idiots. So, kind of who cares what your 8-year-old self thought life would be like.
Almost nothing we do in life matters to anyone outside of a select small group of people who know us. This is decidedly not what we imagined for ourselves as children. It’s not even what we imagine for ourselves as adults, but here we are.
Here’s the thing though, being famous would suck and there is no historical highlight reel.
There are two types of ‘famous’ for argument’s sake in this post. Those who go down in history and those who are famous in our current time. For no particular reason, I’m going to point out why neither one of those types of fame is worth aspiring for.
Going Down in the History Books
The only people who read history books, in any great quantity, are children, and only because we force them. Because children are lovable idiots, they don’t care about historical figures.
Adults have a better appreciation for historical figures, but since nobody is forcing us to read history books, we hardly ever think about them.
Key Takeaway: Even if you do make it into the history books, only snot-nosed kids are reading about you.
Most people who do make it into the history books are only remembered for a few hundred years. Those we do remember for longer, like Alexander the Great, are probably more myth than real humans.
If you thought of yourself as a nerdy, insecure, 5′ tall introvert—but history remembers you as one of the greatest conquerors ever—that would be weird. It might not even feel special if you didn’t identify with that person.
Being remembered in the history books is among the rarest possible things a human can achieve. You probably have to be a combination of at least two of these to make it: lucky, kill a bunch of people, or be a real self-absorbed dick. Or Jesus, you could be Jesus. Other than that you’ll probably be forgotten pretty quickly after dying.
What About Being Famous in Your Own Time?
Kanye West is famous now, but I seriously doubt anyone will be talking about him in 300 years. His fame seems pretty temporary.
In exchange for that fame, he’s given up having the traditional human experience. We all only get one life and for his life he can’t go to the grocery store without TMZ taking pictures of his mismatched sweats. He can’t have dinner in public without countless fans bothering him for a selfie. That sounds awful.
Once you have enough money that money is no longer something you think about, it becomes a very poor trade. Money just buys things. Would you trade all privacy—the inability to escape the microscope—just so you could buy things? And, that’s only for the lucky famous people who continue to have enough money to be able to buy whatever they want.
For a lot of famous people, they eventually burn through their money so they can’t buy fun things and they still get harassed everywhere they go. They, too, only get one life. They get to buy expensive things for the first few years, then they have to spend the next several decades as front row spectators to the phenomenon of watching themselves becoming less and less relevant.
For most of us, we can always hope our best days are ahead of us. For washed-up former celebrities, they know they’ve already made their impact. They played their part on the world stage and are now just growing old. Oh my goodness, that sounds terrifyingly awful.
I’ve made virtually no lasting impact on the world, so my most impactful years are almost assuredly ahead of me. For the Olsen Twins, they have to live 87% of their life AFTER they made their biggest impact.
Back to the good news—It’s much better to not be famous.
Despite your best effort, you never became famous. Congratulations! You are basically anonymous everywhere you go. Sure, you aren’t the main character in the movie that isn’t actually happening all around you, but at least nobody is taking pictures of you in your dirty sweats.
But, you kind of are the main character for your own life, and you only experience life through your lens. So being a less famous main character is a lot better. You also get to know that everyone who is your friend is doing so because they like you, not because they want something from you.
Celebrities don’t have this. They can’t meet someone cute at a coffee shop and strike up a conversation and feel what it’s like to know, for 100% certain, that they like you for being you, not for being famous. Maybe that’s why many of them feel so depressed and isolated. It’s hard for celebrities to make friends with people who aren’t also celebrities because they never know the intentions of non-famous people. They also don’t know the intentions of famous people. It just has to really suck to kind of not trust anyone.
More good news—You’re going to die, eventually.
After you die you can stop being embarrassed about being a dorky self-conscious kid who failed at his first attempt to wear his hat backward. You can also stop reliving the fact that you never became famous. If you could go back and watch yourself talk to a girl for the first time you’d think, “Death, not so bad.”
Luckily, as a non-famous person, pretty much nothing you do will be rehashed on the global stage. So, there’s really no pressure. So much of our lives are wrapped up in low-grade stress, hoping everything turns out ok. It will. Or it won’t. Either way, nobody is paying attention.
You can put yourself out there and have a blog where one post you’re trying to be a really uneducated, philosophical, Sam Harris type character, and the next you’re a poor mans Dave Berry. Either way is fine. If I write a post and nobody shares it, it’s only embarrassing for me—and only because I think other people give a shit. Nobody else gives a shit. Nobody is looking at my unshared posts and thinking, “Ohhhhh my GAAWWDDD!! Only three people shared Mr. Burrito Bowl’s post relating pancakes to his existential crisis over his own mortality. How embarrassing!!”
Nobody Will Remember The Dumb Things You Did After You Die
Every embarrassing thing you’ve said, done, and written will be gone.
That cringe-worthy time when you were nine and tried out wearing your hat backward for the first time but felt incredibly self-conscious so you turned it back around? Gone. That time in 4th grade you embarrassed yourself by buying folders of puppies for class instead of superheroes? Gone. Even that time at the end of 8th grade when you accidentally hit the school Principal with a roll of toilet paper during a school assembly your parents were present for? Long story, and gone.
Every failure you’ve ever had will eventually slip through the cracks of the world’s collective consciousness.
How Does This Article Help Anything?
Just don’t be upset if you go through your entire life without ever going viral. Fame is fleeting and it wrecks more lives than it saves. If you live a quiet, happy life, you’re much better off than most celebrities.
I don’t know. I guess just really go for it, man. Whatever you want to do. Don’t be afraid to fail because nobody is looking at you. I mean that in the most positive way possible. Everyone else is just worried about their own failures. And even if they somehow do remember your particular failure, you’ll be dead eventually.
Here are some articles that are more helpful to everyday life
Combating Option Overload and Getting Back to Living
Santa Claus- How to Make Poor Kids Feel Like Shit
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