Nobody's Happy for Anybody

When I was a little kid

I wanted one thing

One thing

To be famous

I watched endless hours of television

Movies, hour after hour of nothing but me

Watching all these famous people

And I knew—I KNEW

That one day

I had to be one of them

I just knew it

Like, in my soul

And I think I’m not alone in that

I think, for whatever reason

My generation

My particular generation

Has a lot more people in it

Who want to be movie stars

Or tv stars, or just pop stars

Or just famous

For whatever reason

Famous

I don’t know why

I mean, I know movies and tv and music

Are nothing new

But—

And maybe I’m way off on this

Maybe every generation has had a lot of people in it

Who want to be famous

Maybe I’m not giving—

Well, I don’t know if you’d call it ‘giving somebody credit’

Or whatever

But it just seems like

Everybody I know

Wants to be known

Wants to make an impact

But not just like—invent a cure for cancer

But like—be admired, be envied

Be—I mean, I hate to say ‘popular’

But yeah, popular, right?

I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about, right?

And the problem is

That even as you have this generation of people

All striving for the same thing

The same goal

The goal

That goal

Is losing value

Okay?

Fame—what it is to be famous

Is slowly eroding

Okay?

Because so many more people are famous

And the thing is—

When that all started

When it became possible to be, like—

A Youtube star

Or, a blogger

Or have a million followers on Twitter

We thought, I think, I mean—the collective ‘we’

--We thought that the nature of fame

What it means to be famous

Would just expand

That it would grow

To include all these new people

Who, like, weren’t movie stars

Or pop stars

But were, like, known

Nonetheless

And we didn’t qualify it

We didn’t say—

Oh, well there’s famous

And then there’s being known

And I think that was a mistake

I think we should have done that

Qualified it

Because now we’re labeling all these people as famous

Who aren’t really famous--as famous

The way the people I envied growing up

Were famous

And so instead of expanding

The word ‘Fame'
And the IDEA of fame

Is shrinking

It’s shrinking into nothing

And I think that’s bad

I think that’s really bad

And we need to—

I mean, I don’t know how we can do something about it

Because, I mean, what can you do?

And yes, maybe I’m just jealous because—

I’m not even in that widening and widening pool of people

Who ARE fake-famous

I’ve never even been on a reality show or anything

But—I think—um—

Wait…

Okay, right—I think

That it’s bad

Because we all need

Something

To aspire to

And if that thing

That fame thing

That a lot of us grew up

Wanting

Really really badly

Becomes devalued

I really think we’re all going to, like

Sink into a national depression

Or a generational depression

Or whatever

I mean, isn’t it statistically proven

That we ARE really depressed

And for, like, no reason?

Because things are actually really good

And we have all this stuff?

WELL—that’s because the one thing science can’t give us
Is fame

And it goes really deep
I mean it goes against the idea
Of what the American Dream
Is supposed to be

Because working hard
Doesn’t make you famous

It’s this elusive mysterious thing

And it’s inequitable

I mean, the poor guy down the street

Who just happens to fall off his bike in a really funny way

Can get on The Today Show

The same way a rich guy could, right?

So it’s luck

It’s all luck

And it’s driving all of us crazy

That it’s luck

That we can’t do anything to—

You know, get there faster

If we’re actually going to get there

And so we think

Well, maybe we need to become more ruthless

Maybe we need to become more ambitious

I mean, it’s not true

It doesn’t do any good

But we think it anyway

Because it gives us permission

To hate everybody

Who’s doing really well for themselves
Because we can tell ourselves
That they didn't work for it
That they got it unfairly

I mean, do you know the last time

I was really happy for somebody?

Like, honestly happy for someone

And not threatened by the fact

That they were doing well?

It’s been a long damn time

And I feel bad about it

I really do

I feel like it makes me a bad person

And yet, at the same time

I can’t help it

It feels biological

It feels like it’s built into me

And I don’t know what to do about it

Because my brain or whatever

Sees all these people

Becoming famous

And it at the same time

It sees that fame is becoming something else

And it’s not only panicking and saying—

GO GET THAT

GO GRAB IT

It’s saying—

GRAB IT NOW

GRAB IT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

GRAB IT BEFORE IT STOPS MEANING SOMETHING!

And every time

I see somebody doing well

Succeeding

It's not like--It's not like that whole

Happiness pie idea

Where you think there's only so much happiness in the world

And every time somebody's happy

It's taking some away from you

No

NO

It's not like that

It's--

It's like you see somebody succeed

Become famous

Become known

Whatever

And you think--

You're contributing

You're contributing to this problem

To destroying this thing

That I love

That I want so much

For myself

You're tearing it apart

And I haven't even gotten it yet

It's not even mine yet

And I--

And I…

I…

I…

The thing is…

A lot of us have been spending our whole lives

Running this race

This race

This race towards something

And imagine

Imagine if you spend

Your whole life

Running a race

Only to find out

Halfway through the race

The race that you might not even win

The race that you’ve been running

And will run

Maybe your whole life

Imagine if word got back to you

When you were only at, let’s say

The halfway mark, okay?

I said that, right?

The halfway—okay—

Word gets back

That the finish line

Is gone

That they took it down

That they took everything down

That there is no more race

What do you do?

I mean, if there’s really nothing else you want to do

Besides run this race and win

What

Do

You

Do?

…..

You keep running, right?

You keep right on running

Because—why?

Because you hope—what?

You don’t know

You keep going

But you don’t know why

Because—Maybe because—

What else are you supposed to do, right?

Right?

I mean—

…..

So all you can do

Is run

And hope you get somewhere

And hope there’s something there waiting for you

When you do