-- Naomi Shihab Nye
What can you do? What can you do enjoyably and well? It may never get you on Dancing With the Stars, or the cover of Time Magazine or in the web's newest viral video, but who cares? If you do what you do for fame and fortune, you've already missed the boat. Don't "keep your eye on the prize," keep it on the task at hand -- that's where the real action is.
Naomi knows this. Pulleys and buttonholes trump new media sensations, fifteen minutes of famers, and shallow celebrities. You can count on pulleys and button holes and thousands of other little things to do what they're suppose to do every time without complaint. Can the same be said about you?
We are conditioned to want to be on the silver screen, in the NFL, running a multi-national corporation, or winning the inane contests seen on so-called "reality TV." We are then sold products designed to fill the holes left in our psyches when those absurd vocational dreams are left unfulfilled.
Don't fall for it. If fame comes to you, let it come for some really outstanding work you've done and not merely because you've become the media darling du jour. If you're lucky, it won't come your way at all. And you'll go button holing and pullying along your merry way. Providing an essential service way out of the spotlight, you can be you, do your thing and prosper. Sounds like a fine life to me.
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