The Introspection Collection

TRANSCIPT: I think the need for fame is aninteresting concept. And what I findinteresting about it is not only whypeople want it, but also when they get ithow some don't want it anymore. And sowhen we look at fame, if we look at thereasons why we want to be famous, I meanthis is just my perspective on it,there's this need to feel validated. There's this need to feel wanted. It'salmost like a need for some sort of love.Right?  I mean what reason do people havethat they need to work this hard, and gothis far out of their own way to want toget this kind of attention. There's abiological reason why. An evolutionaryreason why, we feel the need to reach forfame.  Because if we didn't, there wouldn'tbe anybody famous. There would be nobodyneeding to feel that they need to befamous. And so when people say they wantto be famous I think what they're tryingto say is they want to be accepted. Theyprobably feel isolatedmaybe they didn't feel like they werepart of a family. I mean some people arepart of a family and still feel the needto be famous.  But there's this there'sthe acceptance there's a solution ofthis expectation that the world is goingto appreciate me. They're gonnaappreciate me they're gonna appreciatemy work. Some people just want to befamous for the sake of being famous.  I think they look out into the worldand they see that people get this kindof attention. They get their needs met.They get recognition. They get respect. They get money, women, drugs, whatever it is. And so there's this illusion outthere that if I achieve this in my lifeif I make it to this point I haveaccomplished something. I'm successful.  People will admire me. And what I findinteresting about this concept isthat often times when you talk to somepeople  have reached thatlevel of success, reached the mountaintop,a lot of them will say that it's notwhat they thought that it was going tobe. It didn't really take away theirproblems. They really weren't acceptedthe way they thought that they weregoing to be, and a lot of them still feelalone.  So it's interesting to me that wespend our lives looking for thisattention for this reason to bevalidated in our lives and yet we stilldon't feel it when we get it. We feellike it's still not enough, likesomething is still missing.  And when we reach that mountaintop, where do we gofrom there? What do we do? Who are we ? Why are we doing what we are doing?  And I think itcauses a crisis, a conflict with withinour minds because the expectationsthat we have about life, the reasonswhy we do what we do,  come into question.Why are we doing this? Why do we do this? Why as humans do we feel the need toaccomplish these great feats in life?Why is it even for a lot of people thatpower is something they try to achieve? What does greed get you in the end? Right?All these people working so hard to getthese really nice cars and these reallynice houses and they think they'regonna be happy. And maybe some people are.I'm not gonna say that all people arethat way. But what I find interesting is that,the human mind adapts pretty quicklyafter a while to happiness. So it becomesjust like anything else; you get whatyou want and then you get used to it andthen it feels like everything else. I'veseen it time and time again. I've seen somany stories of people that say theybought this big house, they bought thisnice car, they reached the pinnacle ofsuccess and they still felt miserable. They still felt alone and if they didn'teven feel that they just felt normalagain. The house was the house, the car wasstill the car. Even if it was a Ferrari. I've seen it over and over and overagain. You see this with millionaires, orpeople that win the lottery. I mean it’s interesting, you know, and there's a lotof studies that are done on this that say that your level of happiness willdrop back to normal no matter what. So then why are we convincing ourselvesthat that is what we want?  Why do we lookat these other people when we say, " That'ssuccessful. That's what I want. I wantwhat they have." Why are we doing this? I'm not sayingthat there's anything wrong withachievement.  I'm not saying there'sanything wrong with overcoming thingsand making yourself better.  I think weall want that. We all want to berespected for our crafts, who we are, ourabilities. But I also don't understandwhat is our need for this attention in a way that doesn'treally give us what we want from life. I'm not saying I fully understand iteither way, but, it just seems amazingthat we're all working so hard toachieve things in life and especiallycreatives, and you know filmmakers andmusicians and entrepreneurs. We want tobe the next big thing. We want to bethe next big thing, and wedon't even really know why.   I mean we think we do. We think "I want tofeel validated. I want to feel like I'mimportant. I want to feel like what I domatters."  And there's nothing wrong withthat. I just think in the context of whywe do it, can come into question if we really aren't careful about it. You know, when I was younger,when I was a teenager, Kurt Cobain hadcommitted suicide.  I was probably 15 or16 years old. And I remember at that ageasking myself, "Why would someone whoachieved so much success in life, want tokill himself?"  And I really didn'tunderstand it back then.  Ididn't know what I knew now, but itreally stuck with me for a really longtime. How can one go after the things thatmatter in their life and achieve thislevel success and still not be happy? Andhere I am, you know, decades and decadeslater, and I get the question.You know, I mean,  I get the answer to thequestion. Because it isn't enough. It'snot what you expected.  It's these unrealistic expectations that we put onourselves. And I think to me, that's abig fear even in my own life, is thatI'll be trying to achieve things, wantingto go after things and still not behappy. And I see it all the time. I see itfrom other celebrities out there.  And so, what is a realistic expectation? What's that you can hope for in yourlife that's real, that'smanageable,  that that your expectationsare just enough for you to feel likeyou've accomplished something. And whyisn't what you have enough? Why isn'twhat you're doing good enough?  I meanit's one thing if you're in certainsituations where you're dealing withextreme stresses or extreme problems.People in poverty, people in war,people in abusive relationships,addictions. And there's nothing wrongwith striving harder to overcome thosethings. But beyond that point. Beyond thepoint of survival. Beyond thepoint of feeling safe and secure, whichis what we all need, what are we tryingto attain in life?  What is it that an actor wants when he wants tobe on the Hollywood stars, or you know,his name on the Hollywood Boulevard ofStars?   I think there's this need forimmortality because we don't controlother things in our life. We can'tcontrol death. We can't control mostthings in life. And yet we hope that ourideas live on. We hope there's somethingabout this that we transcend time, thatwe broke these barriers ofuncertainty and fear and that we weretranscending something else.  That we were able to leave something greater thanourselves behind. Because of the limitations of our life, because the fears that we have in our life.  I think for some people, fame is this temporarydrug. It's this very powerful drug that lures people in and makes them think that somehow that's gaining morecontrol of their life. Somehow they areattaining some sort of level of love andacceptance. But when they get to thatpoint and they realize how out ofcontrol it really is, that they don'teven have control of the people that don'tlike them. That criticize them. Thatdemean them.  Or even if they had some level of success, it gets to their head,and then they make bad decisions. Then worse yet they try to maintain thatlevel. They consistently think that theycan keep up with that level of fame. Wesee this time and time again withmusicians and singer songwriters.  Imean, how many people have you known whohad a successful album or a book. Andnever wrote a good one again even thoughthey wrote plenty of them after that. Andthat's always an interesting question initself.  What happens to thecreativity process there? Does it notwork anymore? Does the pressure becometoo much? So there's got to be a level ofacceptance that you have in your life.What are you willing to accept? That's an importantquestion for all of us.  I don'tknow what levels I'm willing to accept.But I think it's an interesting perspective.  To try tonthink about our needs for acceptance.Our needs in this world now we're constantlyconnected to each other,where popularity and how many peoplelike you and validation and how manypeople respond to you, also runs upagainst criticism and hate and judgment and negativity. Something that we all do.Something we're all guilty of doing. I'm guilty of doing the exact same thing.Criticizing. Tearing down. So it's interesting this dynamics that we haveand this perspective that we haveon things, and then what's worse is howmuch destruction do we put into ourlives, doing these things? What do wesacrifice? What are we sacrificing in ourlives to achieve these things? What arewe giving up? What relationships are wegiving up? How much of ourselves are wegiving up?How many masks are we actually wearingto achieve these things?  These are fundamental questions. These arefundamental questions about who we areas a species, as a human being. What arewe doing? Why are we doing what we're doing? What is the roles we're playing in thesesituations? And so when we ask ourselvesthese things, one of the things we alsoneed to do is try to figure out what isour needs? What is our actual wants?What's underneath all of it? What's in it for us tohave all these followers? What's in it for us to have all thesefans? All these people who think thatthey know us. Because they hear us on TVand they hear us in  music and they see us in writings, but don't r