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Fame vs Fortune
Friday, May 13th, 2005 by joelYou would be hard pressed in modern times to find an example of someone who was famous but poor. I certainly am. I mean, I guess Gandhi and Mother Teresa were that way, along with a handful of radicals and people who, for whatever reason, take a vow of poverty. Most of that seems to be by choice. That is to say, it’s fairly reasonable to assume the fortune accompanies fame. At least the lasting kind of fame. The kind of fame that gets you a 5-minute segment on the 6:00 news may not have a lot of wealth following it. We as people apparently bow down and cast our wealth in the direction of folks more well-known than we are. Even so, we tend to like considering which we prefer: fame or fortune. You know, because we’re human and we like to ask hypothetical questions. Part of that whole ‘imagine, hope, and dream’ thing. The stuff that makes us both who we are, and also annoying. Anyway.
I would postulate that fortune will win out over fame most times. Allow me to illustrate this point by way of example. I know this guy who does this comic strip which he posts on the ‘internet.’ This so-called ‘Webcomic’ isn’t terribly popular. It maybe has 200 viewers in all. While this guy had a paying job, he wanted nothing more than to have his comic strip become popular. He wanted groupies, and people to discuss the goings-ons in his comic, and to visit conventions, and be stalked. The whole deal. He probably had self-esteem issues, and secretly craved attention.
Then, our unfortunate hero lost his job. As he lived for weeks, then months without a steady income, his perspective on what he wanted out of his webcomic changed. Until one day he realized that he didn’t care squat about the sort of attention he wanted his webcomic to have. He’d rather have money. Why? Because each day as he sat reading the Classifieds he would long for a pizza, or spaghetti, or a nice hamburger. Then he would fix himself another peanut butter sandwich and, you know, imagine.
You see, we need money to live. Popularity is nice and all, but only after you’re fed and comfortable.
