When I grow up I want to be… famous | #22

I have a confession to make. A part of me wants to be famous. I find it embarrassing that even at the very adult age of thirty, it is something I still desire. Yes, for those who noticed, I wrote ‘a part of me wants to be famous’ rather than plainly ‘I want to be famous’ because I want distance from this truth that I am grappling with. 

I realised this when examining the behaviours and patterns I have towards things I like doing. I know that things take time but I somehow always think I could shorten the time to mastery, maybe even halve it if I just kept practising, for example painting, intensely. I noted how this tends to be spurred by a fear that I am behind and have to catch up for the lost years of starting whatever it is -- surfing, skateboarding, art -- ‘later’ in life. Even though I don’t always believe this, a part of me still thinks that unless I can be amazing at it, what’s the point of engaging at all. 

During my teenage years and in high school I wanted recognition and status. I wanted to be known for being a model citizen, for my intellect and for the ‘extra’ work I did to make the world a better place. I guess even back then I did want fame but felt it was beneath me to call it that. I wanted it when I applied and was shortlisted for the Young Western Australian of the year, which got me a big spread in the Sunday Times newspaper. My dad was so proud that bought a few copies of the newspaper and we even cut out and laminated one of them -- perhaps this was part of the problem? Perhaps seeing how that recognition was valued, I craved more of it? 

This desire propelled me to apply for numerous awards seeking recognition for my extracurricular endeavours to be a mover and shaker in this world. It also led me to seeking out scholarships to study abroad in places like France and China. The desire to be loved, validated and seen made me go to great lengths to be a model child. And becoming an overachiever was the result. 

I got a scholarship to study at a prestigious business school, and then in my consulting job, I was promoted from analyst to consultant to manager at an unrivalled speed. I worked with a deeply knowledgeable colleague who took eight years to become a manager and I distinctly remember his look of disbelief when he learnt I’d got to the same position in three and a half years. 

I remember the pride I had at gaining external recognition in all these areas and feeling glee that my belief that deep down I was special and better than the rest must be true! But feeling this way made me think I couldn’t waste time socially with others my age, I needed to grind and each moment was not to be wasted. This conflated view of myself made me feel alienated from others, which created a greater distance from the love and appreciation beneath what actually led me to seek fame. 

The alienation came in multiple forms. In my masters, I remember having the realisation that, wow, others who weren’t even in our class were socially closer to the guy who sat next to me throughout my whole masters. Even though it’d have been easy to become good friends as we spent so many class hours next to each other, I never bothered to get to know him as a person. I'd spend class preparing for consulting interviews by doing mental maths exercises on my computer and job hunting instead of building friendships with those around me. Every minute counted, remember? Later in my work life, I also remember all my colleagues at a particular consulting project organised a Christmas dinner, but didn’t invite me. I remember feeling so left out and felt shunned but they weren’t to blame, I never put the time in to get to know them as people, as friends. 

I’d done a lot of work in therapy since then, and through journaling, coaching and other modalities such as yoga and somatic work, and realised that somehow somewhere along the way I believed I needed to be calculative of where I spent my time. How else was I going to reach worthiness, validation and fame if time wasn’t well spent? Unless I was performing at a high level, I would not be seen and recognised as a valuable individual and my worst fear would be true -- that I am insignificant. 

I unlearned so many things and learnt so many other things around the importance of real and sustained authentic connection. I learnt what I needed to relax to make and sustain relationships that are important to me. I examined how and why I make choices and how I live my life. So I thought I’d done all the work  and the desire for fame and recognition was in my past. 

But it is true that old habits die hard because I was far from putting them in my past. Wired hard into my being is still a need for fame and recognition. It takes place when I am on my longboard flying down concrete in central London, or even in a yoga class. The only times I have ever fallen off my longboard were when I noticed other people being impressed with me and that made me ‘walk on clouds’ and lose focus on actually manouvring the longboard. In yoga, I sometimes notice myself working extra hard to do the optional or advanced poses, pushing extra hard to hold balances so as to not fall over. In times like this, I ask myself who am I performing to? And what am I performing for? 

The point when I realised that this wiring still ran deep was when I saw it taking place in the practice I consider most sacred, which is my art. 

I thought that my pivot into art was me getting closer to being an ‘enlightened’ being -- creating was the underlying commonality of all human beings. And that I was going to go on this path in a pure and authentic way. But as I sit and reflect on some of the choices or even ways I think about my art trajectory, I realise the urgency and pressure I put on myself still ultimately relate back to this need for fame. While many great artists achieve their greatest fame post-mortem, I could see that my impatience, hardcore way of working and untenable drive was and is still about recognition.

I saw myself frustrated asking the following: Why does it not look as good as I want it to yet? How much harder do I have to work to get to where I want to be? What is the quickest want to recognition and hence to sustaining a livelihood as a full-time artist? 

It was like when I decided to leave my full-time job and pivot into art, I had finally arrived at the very thing that would define me, give me a sense of identity and if I worked hard enough, give me fame. 

But the truth is, my desire for fame and prestige is grounded in something deeper. I am certain that if I encountered fame through my art, it wouldn’t be the final destination. The goal post would just keep moving. Realising I want fame makes me realise I need to address what underlies these beliefs that fame will solve my issues of not being seen and recognised, not being addressed. And it will squash my risk of rejection and being left behind. 

Curious as to whether this might be a universal phenomena, I did some research and saw that many concur that the desire for fame is a reaction to being made to feel extremely insignificant at some point in the past. Ergo, it is rooted in the experience of being neglected, to have suffered. It is like a course correction for previous deprivation in the recognition category. It can stem from not being recognised or loved and seen by one’s parents, it can even be induced by schoolyard bullying, the disparity being adulation at home and the real world, or the way one’s parents were treated by the world. 

One article I read suggests that the desire for fame stems from wanting to resolve past hurt and pain. It emerges from the desire to be known by others but more truly, to be significant to them. But the significance fame gives a person is different from the significance we have by being a good friend or someone people can count on. 

The School of Life wrote a brilliant article On the Desire for Fame. And sums it up as follows “fame really just means you get noticed a great deal – not that you get understood, appreciated or loved.” They go so far as to suggest that the mature strategy is to give up on fame while maintaining the aim that lies behind it. We can still maintain a desire to be appreciated and understood, but these are only available through one to one relationships. There is no shortcut to friendships and deep human connection. This is what the famous person is ultimately seeking. 

Maybe this is the crux of the problem, that I do struggle with my one-to-one relationships. That in so many instances despite having lots of friends across the world and across communities, I still feel a deep sense of loneliness and insignificance. And so I look to fame. But I know that the fallacy that fame and prestige would give me the happiness I desire still requires some reflection and true awakening. 

Maybe you were expecting a smoothly rounded ending and happily ever after, but I know that I am still grappling with this so there is no ending. There is only recognition of what I am working with and a desire to interrogate it further. I might write more about this in the future but for now let’s end here.