I have been pondering why it is that we get so worked up about certain stars dying. I have seen people get more choked up talking about famous deaths than those of their own family. I mean really, we don't really know these people. Do we? We have little pieces of them; a song, a law, a poem, a philosophy, a movie, a story, a biography, sometimes more photos than any human should ever have taken... But have we ever taken them to lunch, assured them that their hair would grow back or babysat for them while they went to the doctor. What is it about the person we think we know that hurts us so badly when they are gone?
A few months ago a found out that one of my favorite authors, Micheal Crichton, had died of throat cancer at the age of 66. He had not made his battle public and, in the midst of planning our family trip to Disney World, I some how didn't know that he had passed until months later. I was so upset. I knew that I didn't really know this man, but having read all his work and his autobiography, Travels, I felt like I had seen into who he was. He was always there to write something new, intelligent and exciting. Suddenly all of the future plans I had of curling up with his work, his psyche, his brain children were gone. My hopes of getting to tell him thank you were lost as well. Much the same happened when my Grandfather passed away when I was eight. I started to cry, not for the man I knew, but for the man I realized I would never know. All the things about him and our family that were now lost forever. Some of the most intense pain a person can go through is the lost of a pregnancy. It is the lost of something to come. Something beautiful and perfect that is already formed in your mind.
I think that is why we mourn for the celebrities we loose. We are mourning for an idea of things to come. We have seen great things come from them in a HUGE way and we can't wait for the next great thing. The best thing I can think of to do is go into the world and create something great in our own lives. Start creating in the way only you can so that, when you die, people will cry and say, "Is that really the end?"
The reason I was upset about MJ is I can't remember a time that he wasn't 'in' my life. I mean when I was little I listened to his records, and I grew up with them.
ReplyDeleteIt is strange about how we get. I think it is society that puts in a place where, when they are gone, we feel like someone we really knew, was gone.
Great post.