Someone once told me that they're preparing to be famous. My thought: where's the bucket?

A former roommate once told me that she had a friend who told her that she was preparing for the day that she’ll be famous. Other than picturing this woman rehearsing in the bathroom mirror her acceptance speeches, I immediately pictured a woman, an African princess sitting on the stoop of a Brooklyn brownstone roasting in the summer sun, waiting for this coveted prize of fame to fall in her lap. I asked my roommate what her friend meant when she said she was “preparing”.

It’s not like fame is the type of thing that creeps on a woman like the onset of menstruation, widening her hips and filling her breasts with life’s potential to continue through her womb. My roommate laughed at my question as though I had uttered the cutest thing ever. “She’s right,” my roommate said while reaching in the refrigerator for a jar of peanut butter. “We should prepare ourselves to be famous. We’re going to be famous, Nicole!” I must have given her a queer look, because she finally gave up trying to convince me and retreated to her room, humming.

Years later, I still ruminated on my roommate’s revelation about her friend’s fate. I still pictured the woman sitting on the stoops of a Brooklyn brownstone roasting in the sun. I had no idea where this thought came from, but every time I thought about this phantom-soon-to-be-famous-friend of my former roommate, I thought about her sitting Buddah-like in the sun waiting for her destiny like a child sitting by a bon fire waiting to be initiated at a ritual ceremony.

Perhaps my imagination stemmed from the fact that I had no idea what she did for a living? Was she the type of writer who sits on park benches and on the edges of cliffs to spot the next idea without a journal or a pen? Was she the type of photographer who go everywhere without a camera? Was she the type of designer who only stares at people from the stoop of her brownstone without a sketchpad? I thought about the sun she sits in. That burning furnace in the sky that incites me to squint at dreams in the form of clouds. Those same clouds have sailed many a voyages across the sky in my childhood as I lay on grass to count them. One. Two. Three. I waited for a queen, sometimes a king, their crowns pointed like arrows. Dreams belonged to the sky.

How can one go about preparing for dreams to fall? Would they lose their mystique when they land in our laps like fallen angels? Would we realize that they weren’t for us to begin with and let them back into the sky like free doves? Many people dream dreams that aren’t theirs, but for someone else. Many people dream dreams and easily get them yet take them for granted. Many people dream dreams that they get, but quickly regret getting them.

Therefore, perhaps the concept of “preparing” for dreams makes sense after all. Perhaps one should always make sure to have the right everything to make their dreams feel at home inside their souls. Like preparing to have a gold fish for a pet, one must buy a tank, fill it with water, and buy fish food. But that doesn’t stop the gold fish from dying the next day.

My granny always says while we plan, God laughs. A fish may have all the water and food it needs, but life and death have other plans. It’s great to have dreams, but while we look forward to achieving them it’s also important to live in the moment—those moments that will never come again. I remembered while I was in college how much I used to dream of being the woman I am today with my own independence, living in New York City, and doing what I love. However, if I had the choice of being transported back in a time capsule for just one day, I would choose to re-live those college days eating ramen noodle soup for dinner and having the most fun with people, who like me, were young and free. I would go back to 2001 when New York City was still a mystery, an oyster waiting to be cracked open and explored.

Life, like those clouds in the sky, move on. At sunset the sun bleeds into those clouds as they rest behind the hills come evening then disappear. Live your best life now and experience the dreams you never knew you had while sitting and waiting for the one you thought you had. Yes, good things come to people who wait, but what you do in the meantime is just as meaningful to your growth. In fact, “the meantime” is what prepares you for the ever-evolving life ahead of you. There’s nothing one can do to prepare for dreams to come through besides live. Life is not about calculating each and every move like a chess game. If that were the case all the time, then when would you have time to look up from the checkered realm into reality?

So when I think about my roommate’s friend and my picturing her sitting in the sun, waiting, preparing, I realize one can never prepare for such things as fame. The only preparing is to live and work hard with hopes that whatever we do makes us happy and perhaps will inspire others.



Nicole © 2011

Share |