Fame and Everyday Life

I had a little taste of fame a few days ago. It had nothing to do with my talent. It was just a fluke caused by my blog and name being mentioned on MSN.money.com. My readers went from a hundred a day to fifteen hundred in one day. I was overwhelmed by the many e mails I received that day. I was flattered that so many people were reading my blog. I thought that kind of volume would continue from then on. It didn’t. Now I can’t even find my blog on google. A few days ago my blog came up first on the google search engine. So much for instant fame.

I checked out the length of time people spend on my blog. It averages two and a half minutes. What can I say in two and a half minutes? This is the story of our world today. Instant communication all over the world but very little depth. We just don’t have the time to spend because we are flooded with input from the world.

How much can we really influence each other anyway if we have so much coming at us? It is like a river. We are in the midst of it. Other people and ideas are constantly flowing by us. We reach out and grab what we can. But then more stuff and more people flow by us and we quickly let go of the first ideas for the next ones.

Television, especially television news contributes a lot to this state of mind. If we watch the news we are bombarded with input about the world. People come into the spotlight and quickly disappear. Watching television news feels to me like I am in a constant state of emergency. The news today is spiraling down and it takes away my personal optimism. I should quit watching it.

I talked about a book in an earlier blog, The Paradox of Choice Why more is Less by Barry Schwartz. This book has many interesting theories. He says things we all know but rarely think about. Things like, what is happiness? What makes us happy? He says it is all relative and dependent mostly on our internal state of mind. A person winning the lottery is very happy at first. A person becoming paralyzed is extremely sad at first but after a few months, those things don’t even matter. The happy person returns to a former state and so does the sad person. It doesn’t matter that much what is going on in the external world. What matters is how we feel inside. So if you ask me, What is it like to live in Mexico? All I can answer is, What is it like to live in your own head?

Barry Schwartz talks about the relativity of our lives. And this really hits home to me today. When I first put my blog on, just a few weeks ago, I was thrilled that a hundred people read it. After I got fifteen hundred hits in one day and the next day it went down to two hundred, I was sad. If I had never gotten that huge amount of hits in one day, I would have been thrilled to have the two hundred hits…..

Thinking about all of this, I wonder what I can say to people about living in a foreign country. I think sometimes our own minds are foreign countries. What is the cost of living in your mind? Is your mind safe? Is it a good place to live? What is the weather like up there?

I will be surprised if people get through this post. It will take more than two and a half minutes to read. We are so impatient these days. Maybe because there is too much stuff constantly coming at us. I am glad I wrote it though because it reminds me that fame is of little importance. It is like a breeze that floated my way. It had nothing to do with me personally. I am still a good person. I am no different than when I had a thousand readers. My writing hasn’t changed either. The breeze has just moved on.

The most important thing in my life is to remember to be good to the people around me. The maid, the restaurant people and even the people I pass on the street. I like to say hi to people passing me by. I like to see them smile. I do this in the States too, in large cities. My friend teased me about it. But sometimes a smile totally changes a person’s face. I smile and say hello in English or Spanish, no matter how angry or threatening someone looks to me. It is like a gift when that person smiles back and I understand that I had totally misjudged him or her.

I realize that nothing is certain. Everything is in flux and we are here such a brief time. What do we have besides the moment? I say, be kind and appreciate those who come into our lives, even just passing us by on the street.

Simple pleasures. That is my goal. To appreciate simple pleasures. If just one person reads my blog and gets something out of it, I am now grateful for that one person. I am not alone out here in this flowing river. If you have gotten this far in this post, Thank You for taking the time to read it. Patricia