Fame–just the word itself has a strange fascination. When you spend a lot of time learning about the rise and fall of old Hollywood stars, it’s a word you can’t help pondering. It was, after all, the magnet that kept pulling performers to Hollywood, the summit every performer kept struggling towards. It’s quite literally something one in a million people will ever experience, and yet how many of us have fantasized about it, if only to amuse ourselves?
And then there’s that great mystery of extreme fame, or the tragedy of it, if you will. The grim and ever-lengthening list of those wildly beloved performers who reached that glorious summit and found themselves slipping. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Prince–to name a few major names–all pulled into that same terrible story. Extreme glory, extreme stress, unimaginable ups and downs–and pills. That’s not counting the legendary names who died in sudden accidents, or for other unexpected reasons…but there’s something uniquely heartbreaking about those pills.
How is it that someone can achieve unfathomable success doing what they genuinely love to do–what they were born to do–and still have their story end so miserably? How can your passion affect millions of people’s lives for the better, only to lose yourself so young? Various answers seem obvious, of course: worldwide fame is extremely stressful; drug addiction destroys many people’s lives no matter who they are; maybe human beings simply aren’t built to handle extreme fame, especially in the modern era. No doubt lots of people would say it’s not such a big mystery, and maybe it isn’t. But perhaps, in some cases, there’s a little more to it–something deeper and more fundamental to all of us. What if you reached that glorious summit and found that at the top, waiting for you to climb in, was a box?
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