Fran Larson

What Price for Fame and Celebrity? Tiger Woods and Others Paying the Ultimate Price of Unhappiness.


Posted: Saturday, November 28, 2009

by Fran Larson
http://www.franniesquotes.com/

When I was a little girl, my Mother always took us to the mountains of North Carolina for about a month during the summer. My Dad always had to work, but Mother would always take us to our beloved Bee Hive Inn in a small rural area, outside of Ashville.

Behind the Bee Hive Inn was what my child's mind saw as a huge mountain. I used to just stare at it and wonder why my two sisters and myself were not climbing this huge mountain.

After I grew up, about 15 years ago, my husband, Jim and I took a trip to North Carolina. I told him about the Bee Hive Inn and the huge mountain. Our curiosity got the best of us and we began searching for my childhood vacation home, The Bee Hive Inn. Finally, a farmer selling apples from his apple orchard told us what direction to head. He cautioned us that it was no longer an Inn, but was now a storage facility. The closer we got, the more excitement I felt. It had been many years and to think the building as still there. That meant I would get to see the huge mountain behind the Inn.

We arrived to find a run down sad-looking building. There were no homey rocking chairs on the front porch, no horseshoe games, no apple trees and obviously not any people. (The same families would come year after year).

"Is that little hill in the back what you thought was a mountain?"

"Yes, I thought it was a mountain."

I never forgot that day..If I can learn anything at all from this experience, it is this:

Sometimes childhood illusions are best left as illusions.

That is how I think of fame and being a celebrity. The celebrities are all caught up in an illusion or perhaps a childhood dream. In spite of the money that they have acquired, they have to trade in their real, authentic self to be the public's illusion, as well as their own.

Their life is usually more dramatic, unhappy and sometimes, even tragic.

Here are a few of the latest headlines:

Well, you get the idea. I know heartache and tragedy comes to all, but I think some would have been avoided had a childhood illusion not turned into reality.

Francine Larson:

Co-Author of Character Keys to a Bright Future.

She is a freelance writer

Francine Larson has a new book that just came out, "The Lure of Annabelle Key Lighthouse," an exciting Christian Teen Novella. You may view it at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115229/

See more articles by Francine Larson at:http://www.examiner.com/modern-love-in-tampa-bay/francine-larson

She also writes for The Highlands at Scotland Yards. She writes poetry and short stories. She is a contributor for Yahoo (http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/685738/francine_larson.html)

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Debra
 2 years 163 days ago.
Fran, I think that what you say is often true. What appears to be the giddy happiness of celebrity dissolves into the bitterness of failure when they discover that money and fame didn't solve all their problems.
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