Why do we, as human beings, tend to obsess over certain people? Artists, writers, singers, movie stars, celebrities of all shapes and colors.... Why do we covet the letters, journals, photos, diaries, and grocery lists of distinguished individuals? Why do we feel it so important to understand, to know everything about them, as if that individual, rather than ourselves, has the key to the meaning of life?
It's not merely that, through whatever medium in which they have distinguished themselves, they express life better than the rest of us can, or that they achieved great things. We seem to believe that they actually know things that the rest of us don't know. But don't we love their work, in part, because we see the truth of our own reality reflected in it? And yes, there are certainly things that we can learn from them, as there are things that we can learn from all human beings, but that doesn't explain our fascination with the individual: all the things we long to know about every banal aspect of their everyday lives. How everything suddenly becomes exciting when it involves a "star"--as Woody Allen so adeptly mocked in To Rome with Love, in which Leopoldo (a totally normal man) wakes up one day to discover that he has become a celebrity for no reason, and finds his life suddenly inundated with reporters who film him brushing his teeth, or demand to know all the details of what he ate for breakfast. You also see it in the novel The Bird of Night by Susan Hill, about the life and love of a great poet gone mad, in which young academics are so desperate to get their hands on Francis Croft's personal "papers"--not just to better understand and interpret his poetry, but so they can affirm their own connection with him, the man himself ("I know that I have an affinity of some kind with him, I feel a closeness," said the young, freckled man with long fingers like seaweed). Along the same lines, you can see videos from the 60's in which teenage girls talk with perfect seriousness about how John Lennon is their soul mate and they "just know" that they're meant to be together.
We seem to be looking for answers in the lives of these famous people, but maybe all we're looking for, after all, is proof that we're not alone--that there is someone else out there who thinks and feels like you do, someone who can express the trials and treasures of existence better than you can, someone who is esteemed and admired, and who therefore vindicates your own existence--since you consider yourself akin to them in spirit.
So we continue to associate ourselves with celebrities, to obsess over them, finding in their glory the kind of glory that we expect or want for ourselves. To be recognized--that's all most people want. To be seen as we are, or as we see ourselves--or, barring that, to be seen at least as something of consequence. Not just another blip on the radar of human existence, not just another ant crawling among the 7 billion. The hope that we invest in people who have accomplished much is the hope that we are not alone, that we can be understood, and that we can understand this world we've been born into--and that a little bit of their greatness, the part of them that will live on after they have died, is also part of us.
But when it comes to understanding life, and understanding ourselves, maybe we'd be better off if we spent less time looking to them--believing they have all the answers--and more time looking into ourselves. All lives are reflected into each other, after all, and though it's true that the experience of every human being is unique, the only way you will ever understand life is if you understand your own experience of it. The only way that you can avoid being alone is if you can communicate and share that experience with other people. And, if you can communicate it in a way that resonates with other people and inspires them in turn, then you've discovered some of your own greatness.
Sources of inspiration for this post:
The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
To Rome with Love by Woody Allen
Perusing the Daily Mail the other day and being absolutely astounded at the minute reporting on totally insignificant things
