Presents

All we see is mirrors

I have been thinking a lot recently about fame, what it is and why we value it so highly. Fame is a commodity in our culture, something that has tangible worth, that a person can trade on to great benefit. But why are some people famous and others not? And why do we attach so much to celebrity?

I am in the blessed position of having achieved a small level of fame. People I don’t know send me messages of appreciation, and even gifts. People invite me around the world to hear what I have to say. Obviously, this is something I am very grateful for and take much  pleasure from. But whenever someone I don’t know approaches me to tell me I am amazing, a little voice in my head wonders why. This person has a fixed idea of who I am in their heads. They think that they know me, but they don’t really know who I am as a person. Their idea of me is based on what I represent to them, not who I am in my day to day life. I could be bitchy, self-indulgent or deceitful but they wouldn’t be aware of those qualities in my personality, because they haven’t got to know me yet.

I know how this feels. There are people – mostly DJs – who inspire me and mean a lot to me as well. They represent something that I don’t have enough of in my life, that I would like to have more of, a part of me that I feel I miss out on in my reality, if you like. I get a kick out of meeting them and saying hello, as if somehow rubbing shoulders with them will bestow upon me the ability to make up for my own self-perceived lack. Maybe it actually does. Maybe this is one of the points of fame (and an idea that i draw upon in The Spaceship Story), that when someone who has achieved a level of recognition in a particular field is open and present with someone who isn’t as advanced on their particular path, we all ascend to a higher vibration.

But at the same time, it occurs to me to wonder when I meet people I admire, why I have built this up to such a thing in my head. I don’t really know you. I don’t really know anything about you as a person and it’s entirely possible if I really got to know you I wouldn’t like you so much. Again, I am in the blessed position of getting to meet and even getting to know many of my heroes. And always it’s a revelation to see that at the end of the day they are just people, who get bored or frustrated or dissatisfied with life at times like the rest of us.

So I got to thinking about what it is someone represents to me. And what I represent to someone who doesn’t know me. And there I found my answer. To Re-Present. We are gifted. We are all gifted, it is about how we use and share this gifts. We have a present and  we re-present it to the world. The more you share, the more the world gives back to you. To be gifted, to be blessed, to have presence, it is all the same, and it is only given to us so we can pass it on. And so as you come to represent something greater than yourself, something greater than who you are in your day to day life, the more you recognise and accept the responsibility of those gifts, the more you are able to grow, and the more you come to represent to people.

In our Western culture unfortunately there is a huge disconnection between what someone represents and who they are as a person. Gossip magazines subsist on this fact. What your gifts are and how you use them to promote yourself in the world has nothing to do with who you truly are in your dealings with people. In fact, in our culture probably the converse is true: the majority of famous people have got there by having selfish, egotistical, and ruthless tendencies.

The need to latch on to role models and feel uplifted and inspired by the work of others is a very valid one, don’t get me wrong. But I have learnt that someone can represent something wonderful in the world but not be so much of a wonderful person themselves. Equally, someone who is a truly wonderful person may not represent so much to the world beyond their immediate circles of family and friends, because they do not have the gift of shameless self-promotion. Often that seems to me very unjust: I could name to you half a dozen people in raw foods who do sterling work and don’t yet get the recognition they deserve, while equally I could name half a dozen more who don’t seem to me to have any real talent or gift but have achieved a level of success through unabashed self-publicity and a ruthless pursuit of their goals.

Maybe, this is one of the ways we can heal the wider culture. By only celebrating those who act with integrity and authenticity. By only allowing our representatives on planet earth to be those whose work is aligned with their core values in life. Maybe then, when someone whom I haven’t met before comes up to tell me they love me, I will rest assured that what they perceive of me and what I perceive of me are the same. That they haven’t built me up into something unrealistic and unattainable in their minds, but that their idea of what it means to achieve recognition in our culture is inextricably bound up with having a sense of morality and ethics and a genuine desire to improve the world with your presence and your presents.

1 Comment for this entry

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  Anna Middleton

  July 16th, 2011 on 2:29 pm

  That’s a beautiful article Kate, thanks for sharing it. I know exactly what you mean about why we do what we do, the image we present, how true we are to it and what implications that can have. For the time we’ve spent together, I feel that you truely do present an honest representation of who you are and I find you incredibly inspiring.

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