How should we determine when someone has “arrived”? There has to be some sort of criteria. It seems like it should be based on other people’s opinions rather than your own, since it would be hard to be objective. Anyone could say they’d arrived, but they could just be a shameless self promoter (not that this type can’t arrive, just that you would need to be skeptical if they were the ones that told you).
Once one has arrived, is it possible to lose the status, to leave? Or is arriving a permanent distinction? It doesn’t seem fair that someone getting their fifteen minutes of fame would qualify as having “arrived”. Extending the fifteen minutes might make it possible, but even then, should dumb luck be rewarded permanently? Should arriving be based on material possessions or a title that provides a level of status? If material wants and status aren’t of interest to you, then you probably don’t care one way or another if you have arrived. Or is that what it’s about? Once you’ve arrived, you’re too cool to care?
Can “arrival” even be determined before your life is over? It would be too demanding and limit the number of people that “arrived” to a miniscule number if we limited it to people who received televised funerals. Local obits would make the club too crowded. Today when I was reading Saul Bellow’s obit in The New York Times it seems like it would be a pretty good measure. It’s a widely circulated newspaper, and it has a little class, so why not? Still, it’s kind of depressing to think that you can’t “arrive” until you’re dead.
I don’t know if it is quite what you are looking for, but maybe 40 years ago Mad ran an article called “How to know if you have really made it” I can only recall a couple of their ways to tell if you have really made it, but they still make me chuckle
You have a four car garage and you have to leave your Ferrari out in the rain.
You go to play golf with the big boss, and try your best to beat the pants off him.
I think that it changes every day. I watched the Errol Flynn documentary last night (referenced in another thread here) and he was “In” one day and “Out” the next.
If the president or the head of the U.N. still takes your call you certainly pass.
My personal criteria are a bit lower: does the dog still want to take a walk every day? And are you still legal to fly?
When you use “criterion” for the singular and “criteria” for the plural.
All I know is I have arrived in my own little world just by finding ways to survive and even sometimes thrive when life is difficult. My career goal is to be someone people are happy to see when they run into me. Set your own criteria and you have arrived whenever you say you have.
One rule is that, when you are satirized in some major medium, you are somebody. Mad Magazine or Dave Letterman makes a sharp-edged joke about you? You’re in!
When the word on the street says you are sooooooooo last week, you’re hot, for now.
If you’re an entertainer, and somebody more famous slams you viciously in magazine interviews, You. Are. The. Shit.
If you’re a politician, and some other politician tells the press that you’re doing a cheap political trick, he considers you a threat to his poll numbers.
Nobody writes letters to the editor about you unless you have arrived.
I just arrived! I brought chips and dip, and now it’s time to pa…
…oh? That kind of arriving? Oh. (Anybody want some chips and dip?)
I figure you kind of just… know when you’ve really arrived. You’ll get the feeling that you are where you’ve wanted to be, where you’ve dreamed of. It’s a gut feeling, I think.
Beer is fine. French onion and oregano jalapeno, both! Weird One, I’ll make some sandwiches, but no smokeables for me please…
(Sorry about the hijack, Dignan–it’s a very good and intriguing OP, I wish I had a better answer.)
