why you should never look up to anyone

I’ve always wanted to write about celebrities. How we make them into celebrities. How we take these ordinary people and idolize them; how our new religions revolve around people.

Idolization is a big deal to me. It’s a big deal in our society. Even our presidential candidates become celebrities. Certainly our president is one.

Is it bad to look up to someone? No. I do it. I’m a fan of things. I love people for what they do and who they are.

And that’s all well and good until it takes you over. Until you become another being in the jumbled crowd, looking up in awe at a person.

Where has your potential gone? Why do you want to become someone else? Don’t any of you want something more than simply following along as that idol of yours lives their life?

One more question: Why do we need celebrities? We must need them: they’re everywhere. We make more every chance we get. We raise them up above our heads and put posters of their faces on our bedroom walls and wear their crappy fashion designs and bob our heads to their horrible music.

It’s like life is not enough. It’s like we want to pretend that everything is fabulous and beautiful, and it is, but we have to change the fabulous and the beautiful. We can’t idolize old trees or buildings or history. We can’t make ourselves all beautiful, not in the way that we should, not in the way that’s difficult.

We can’t idolize ourselves.

Perhaps it’s laziness: Hey, look, this guy over here is doing really cool stuff. I wish I could do really cool stuff. Wow, look at him go. Look how successful he is! I wonder if they offer a poster of his face…

We don’t have to be ordinary creatures. We don’t have to have a way to escape from our “everyday lives”. We don’t need to build more false gods. We can all be wonderful. We can all idolize ourselves and each other and say, “Look how awesome we are!”

Our lives are ordinary and wonderful. Just like all the lives on this planet. We can make of them what we want. Be the biggest celebrity in your own life. Don’t look up to some other person and want what they have. Go get what you want.

and please, tear down those posters.