Define “never amount to anything”. History books are not going to write about me and I have no kids who will be sentimental over my passing, but my time on earth still means something. It means something to my lovely wife and to my departed parents. I made a difference, no matter how small. I am totally OK with the legacy that I’m leaving behind. Not everyone can cure Cancer or create world peace, but everyone can make a difference in a life. Simply by living you are affecting the world around you so therefore no one, no matter how hard they try, can truly “not amount to anything”.
Exactly. We affect each other, and one can hope that we aim for most of it to be good or at least benign.
But if we have people who love us and who we teach and learn from, it’s not a wasted life.
I enjoy small things. Warm bed. Cats. Hot cocoa. Holding hands. Laughing at a stupid movie.
I suspect that even if I were a famous and Very Important Person, I’d still enjoy those things the most.
I tend to wander over in this territory too… wished I had discovered Twitter, FB, etc.
But alas, the majority of us lead mundane lives. What I’m fascinated over is how most accept it…or in reality, if you’re alive and not in danger/despair, you’ll doing pretty much better than most of mankind in the last thousand years…
I’m reminded of a Thomas Jefferson family tree bio I read about…we did know he had children with his slave, but we only know descendants through one of the sons. The daughters that passed off as white moved out west and changed their names so they dare did not boast that their daddy was a former prez of the U.S. They are pretty much lost to history…just imagine that there are descendants of Thomas who don’t even know of their lineage!
I don’t know if the kind of angst the OP is dealing with would be “cured” by knowing he’s descended from someone famous.
Wouldn’t that just make an individual’s mediocrity that much more obvious to them?
I once went to a semi-famous vineyard in NYS which was supposedly next to the property of a pretty famous actor. On the drive, I thought, “Well, if I see him, do I wave? Do I beep? Do I just Fookin’ Ignore him? Hmmm.”
It was something to think about as various other cars screamed curses at my inattentive driving along my trip.
Once I got there? That person wasn’t there.
Somehow I thought they’d be directing a crew of 20 workers running a competitive vineyard, shouting, “You there…! Get those Vines In The Ground! Sun will be down at 7 and I’m not handing out flashlights! You, in front of them! Dig Faster…!”
Or under a tree writing a sonnet.
Or even riding a tractor-mower while wearing a John Deere hat & flipping off everyone driving by with a highly personalized string of curses.
But… he wasn’t there and somehow I thought that I had missed something.
So, I pondered this over a glass of Cabernet at the vineyard afterward and it finally came to me…
[spoiler] “Damn… This is Good Cabernet! More for me… and fuck’em, His Loss…!” 
You see, not every so called failure is a bad thing. Some days can still be pretty damn good, even if they don’t end exactly how you had hoped. Some victories are so subtle that they can’t be seen in days or weeks or months… but only after years.
Take the job, Make the job, and Have Fun with the job! Who knows? Over time, you might even develop a certain set of skills…
[/spoiler]
I was in The Roebuck in Richmond having lunch when a world-famous rock star wandered in. (Mick Jagger’s ex has a house nearby.) My father and I were the only others in the pub and I let him get on with ordering whatever he wanted and he looked grateful for having been left alone.
This thread reminds me of some of the more nihilist standup routines by Carlin, Burr, Stanhope, and Marc Maron.
I’m impressed by driven people who know exactly what they want and work hard to get it and seem happy when they achieve it. But most people aren’t like that. Most people are empty and try to fill the void with music, sex, drugs, Jesus, kids, whatever. Seems like most settle for “good enough” eventually. Hey, things could be a lot worse, right?
You could try to be a big fish in a small pond. Write stories, draw, youtube videos, whatever, not trying to be famous, just for fun and to squeeze out that creative energy. It’s not too hard to get an audience on the internet, if that’s the sort of attention you want. Even if it’s only a couple hundred people it can be your own little community.
Alternatively, you can derive some happiness from knowing that someday the Earth will be a ball of cinder. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down, etc.
All this discussion reminds me of Ecclesiastes
[QUOTE=Ecclesiastes]
2 “[a]Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“**Vanity of vanities! All is [c]vanity.”
3 What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
4 A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth [d]remains forever.
…
8 All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
9 That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.
11 There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still.
[/QUOTE]
Having three families all secret from each other, all with kids would be worse. And them all knowing about each other but never mentioning it would be worse than that.
As for me, I really don’t give a hoot that I’m unimportant to virtually anyone outside my circle of family, friends and clients.
I’ve been kind of the opposite. I look back on my life and I’ve been on the outer reaches of history. I’ve worked with two Nobel Prize winners. I’ve worked with very early kidney transplants. I was the primary nurse for the first ever in the world non-related bone marrow transplant.
I had to do laundry on March, 25 1965, so I didn’t go with my friends to Selma.
Now, I’m retired and am truely a nobody.
True, but its not about them (no matter how much you may have been programmed to think it is). Its about You. Its about your reactions, your expectations and your life… about managing to snatch the FUN from the jaws of pre-programmed disappointment.
Its about realizing that you really are having fun, and a great day, and if Mr or Mrs Whateverthefuck aren’t around, well too damn bad. Sometimes we as people are so conditioned “not to be disappointed” that we spend every moment Being Disappointed.
(its like saying, “Don’t Smile”.)
The Point is to find a way to break past the “packaging” to to try to see moments as they truly are.
There is MUCH to enjoy if you’ll let yourself see it.
Try to name all the vice presidents of the USA. Unless you are some sort of savant, history buff, or cheating using google, you probably can’t. And those guys are just one heartbeat away from being president! Some of them even became president. In 2000 years even most of the presidents won’t be remembered.
What I’m saying hear is that billions of us humans won’t make the slightest difference in the grand scheme of things. So just do your part for society and enjoy life as you can.
Here Why we know certain inventors, and not others? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board is a current thread discussing how much of actual fame is more a matter of having a good publicist rather than having done something noteworthy.
It lends further perspective to the thought that fame or lasting human awareness of your existence is pretty much a con game.
Never desired to be famous. Only desired to have a nice warm place for my kids, my wife and I to lay our heads, and to be able to spend quality time with family and friends.
Buy a Miata, then go on a drive through some winding hills to a nice little restaurant, and have a Reuben sandwich. Leave a big tip.
In other words, concentrate on small pleasures; try to leave happy people in your wake.
Another demotivator that may be relevant for this thread:
Poster showing a cluster of track runners, rather all bunched together, rounding a curve on the track.
Caption: “For every winner, there are a dozen losers. Odds are you’re one of them.”
(This items seems to have been discontinued, as I couldn’t find it on the demotivator site lately.)
I don’t know what a Miata or a Reuben is.
Hey, just be glad some famous event suddenly isnt thrust upon you like the people in movies who suddenly are in the midst of a government action. Or maybe you’ll be digging in your backyard and come across a treasure.
But truthfully. I have read where people have suddenly been the person first on the scene of a crime or deadly accident. One guy I read, sadly was the first person to find 2 dead bodies that were links to famous crimes in our area.
Yes, but in their time, many of them - and/or many CEOs, Nobel Prize winners, rock stars, pro athletes, billionaires, etc. - enjoyed fame, power, wealth, achievement, status, and influence that most “common folk” around them did not. I think that’s what most forum posters here are getting at in this thread.
I think the common attitude is that it’s not about being remembered thousands of years from now (although that’s a bonus benefit); it’s about achieving or living a much more successful or “I-made-a-difference” life than others.
Or Stoner by John Williams.