>    As we live through challenging times, and often turn to the lives of celebrities to distract us from more pressing matters, I’d like to clear up two misperceptions. 1) The lives of famous people are easier than ours, and 2) We are bound by the life circumstances we are now living.
    I think much of the fascination with the lives of the rich and famous is the illusion that they somehow have it better or easier and, therefore, don’t have to face the mundane matters or difficult decisions we do. That’s simply not true. No one, regardless of fame, wealth or social status gets to circumvent the “why” of why we’re here.
    We’re here to grow through our weaknesses and expand upon our strengths. The fact is everyone has them. Of course, mine are different than yours. However, each of us will have countless opportunities, by way of life choices and life experiences, to overcome our weaknesses and apply our strengths for the highest good.    
    What we do in idealizing the rich or famous is to elevate them to an artificial status that simply doesn’t exist, while negating the purposefulness inherent in our own lives.
    The other reason I think we tend to overindulge in such distraction is that we also misperceive our own life situations as somehow stagnant or, at least, too difficult to change. We get into life patterns that do not suit our true nature and yet, feel trapped by the very circumstances we’ve created through choice.
    Changing our circumstances is possible but requires a certain amount of honesty with oneself.
    First, it requires that we acknowledge responsibility for the choices we have made that resulted in the life situations in which we find ourselves. Secondly, it requires that in those situations where we seem not to have made a choice, but instead find ourselves in less-than-desireable conditions, we adjust how we perceive those conditions. For how we see things makes all the difference in both what we see as well as how we experience it. I am often reminded of the book by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, in which he writes about the importance of bringing meaning in one’s experiences (as in the suffering and degrading conditions of concentration camp internment) and how such meaning can literally make the difference between life and death.
    There is no real benefit to wasting precious time lost in someone else’s life…whether it’s Britney Spears, O. J. Simpson, or your best friend.  Each of us is gifted a finite amount of time in these bodies to experience the world in our own unique way and, by so doing, bring added meaning to existence.
    Today, take the time and energy you might otherwise spend on someone else’s life script and apply it to your own. Take responsibility for the decisions you have made, realize you can see it all differently any time you choose, and them make today’s decisions fully conscious of their importance.
    In case you’ve forgotten, you are directing, editing and starring in this production.
   

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