We stopped in Alter do Chão, Brazil yesterday, on the banks of the Amazon River.
"Alter do Chão" means "Change the food" in Portuguese.
That may not be true, strictly speaking.
There was a nice beach, some iguana. It was lovely. I took a long walk on the beach, and it made me thoughtful.
So I thought I’d share some thoughts about fame.
When I get on a ship, I am completely unknown, an anonymous face among many hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand. On one ship from Japan to Seattle, I met two other entertainers on the ride from the hotel to the port, and they were used to being famous, though not really world-famous. One is known in Canada (Simon), the other in Las Vegas (Brent).
I’m not really known at all, because the students in the schools I have visited around the world soon leave the schools and scatter to the winds, as eventually do the teachers. And that happens on the ships, too.
So we three get on the ship and we are unknown, not famous, not distinguished. Just cruisers. Anonymous. Nameless.
It began to change when I gave my first talk while Simon and Brent waited several days until their scheduled shows. Then I was giving two talks per day along with a third session for Q&A. And I became famous, a rock star. People would come up to our dinner table (me with Simon and Brent) and pay no attention to them while eager to talk to me. Folks would stop us in the passageways to talk to me, ignoring the real talent.
I think the real talent had their feelings a little hurt, but they were gracious about it.
Then Brent did his show, and he became famous. Then Simon did his, and he was famous.
Folks would stop us on the ship, and we didn’t really know who they were aiming to talk to, because we each became famous to a different group of people. I got the three or four hundred who were interested in science, Simon those who liked comedy, and Brent those who liked his mentalist version of magic. There was, of course, some overlap, but often fans of all of us wouldn’t notice that we were all there together, so they’d talk to me and not notice Simon and Brent, or to Simon or to Brent while not noticing the other two.
It was the first good lesson in fame.
The second was that not everyone came to all the talks and shows. There were 1800 passengers on the ship. I got, as mentioned, maybe 400, Simon and Brent lots more, but not everyone. There were other things to do.
So I was a rock star to maybe 400, and still completely anonymous to 1400, still unknown, still just another face in the crowd. True for Simon and Brent as well. When I took walks around Sitka and Ketchikan among the 5400 and the 10,000 cruisers from the different cruise ships there that day, I was a rock star to a far far smaller percentage, 400 into 5400, 400 into 10,000.
The end of the voyage comes, everyone gets off, and they take the fame with them. My rock star status shatters into 400 pieces and vanishes into cars, buses, airports and planes. It goes away.
OK, there was a woman in the airport in Denver while I was about to get on my flight home to Colorado Springs who came up to me and shouted. “Andy! Are you on my flight?” I had never seen her before. We were on different flights, so it took one more flight for my fame to dissolve into nothingness. But there were people on all of my flights home who were from the ship whom I recognized, but for whom I was not famous, so I was just one more face on the plane or in the airport.
And the people who are famous to me are often not known all to my children and those in their generation. To my students in the schools where I subbed, I was an anonymous face, just one more sub in an endless stream of subs, and my famous people are unknown to them, and by and large, theirs to me.
I turned 70 in June. Our house is full of things that are or were important to me, but their importance is fading as I get older. I love my library of books, but nobody will want them. My photographs, so beautiful, will hang on no walls. The books I myself wrote are hardly read at all even now; in time, they will be gone, and the songs I wrote, the articles, the humor I wrote, will all be gone without ceremony.
What remains of the fame, the fortune, the treasures, the memories? What remains of the things we have spent our lives desiring, working towards, collecting? Friends, for awhile, but not for long. Family, for a bit longer, but not forever. So, what then?
I didn't know how to finish this post, but our very close friend Rick wrote a Caring Bridge post today about his wife, our very close friend Coleen, who is dying - maybe today, maybe tomorrow. He wrote this:
"Seek to have your life in God, not in things, not in people, not in places, not in circumstances, not in arguments, not in human intelligence, but in God."
It is the only hope.
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