Fame

 

I saw this plaque at a craft fair I was participating in and suggested (rather strongly!) that it would be greatly appreciated as a gift.  

In places with no good people, it says, be a good person.

Today I saw a Tweet that asked if 'you' were the most famous person in your graduating class.  Well, last weekend was 'my' class reunion, which I didn't attend, even though I still live in the same town I grew up and graduated high school from.  Because covid.  And because I have not kept in touch with very many of the people I went to high school with.

Instead a couple of them came here to have a visit, which I very much enjoyed.

But famous?  I doubt anyone in my graduating class would consider me any kind of famous.

What IS famous, anyway?  Some attention in the media or on line nowadays.  Usually people who are considered 'famous' are entertainers, or athletes. 

Usually those people are young and considered beautiful by some changing societal standard I've never quite understood.  Frequently their degree of famous will depend on things other than their talent and the media makes a great big to-do about their love life - or lack thereof.  Or in the case of women, their bodies.

When I think about the people I went to school with, most of us graduated, got a job of some kind and set about living our lives.  We had no aspirations for 'fame' - or most of us didn't, anyway.  I know for a fact that all I wanted was to be as happy as I could be.

In the end, happiness for me depended on my being able to be creative.  Through a series of coincidences I wound up at a loom and knew I'd come home.

So if you were to ask anyone in my graduating class if *I* were famous, I doubt they would even remember me.  Or if they did, they might remember me from the volunteer work I did - the school paper, working on the annual, pitching in to help with school dances, even the grand march from the old school to the new one - in February.  Fund raising for various school events.  Etc.  But famous?  None of them would think so.

OTOH, if you were to ask someone in the weaving community?  You might get a very different answer.  Or not.  Because I doubt very much I'm 'famous' in the way we measure fame in this society.

Did I set out to be 'famous'?  Hardly.  That was not an ambition to me.  Because fame comes from the outside, not the inside.  'Fame' is generally fleeting and focused on the superficial.  

Yes, of course there are exceptions - such as Dolly Parton - who became famous, but quietly set about helping her people, spending her earned money on raising the standard of living in the area she grew up in and encouraging young people to get an education, take pride in themselves when no one else did.

Yes, she is famous, but I celebrate the fact that she has done more for her people in Tennessee - and beyond - than any single politician in that state.  I would say that Dolly Parton is a Good Person who also happens to be famous.  There are very few around.

If I had kids, I hope I would have steered them away from doing stupid things just to be noticed.  I hope I would have been aware enough to help them focus on values.  On how we have a responsibility to not be jerks to others.  To be kind.  To be 'good'.

Seems like lately too few have gotten the memo.