Chapter 20: I Was There and I Was Famous
Being famous may seem glamorous and desirable. Facebook videos and Instagram photos clamber for likes and comments. Although this technology is relativity new, the desire to be remembered, to feel that your life counted for something, is not new. Yet, the vast majority of people who have lived on this planet never became famous, in the usual way of thinking. As President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “Most children grow up to be just ordinary people.” After a handful of decades, all that remains for ninety-nine percent is perhaps a brief biography on Ancestry.com and a cement marker with fading dates on a cemetery hillside. Marcy Heisler poetically expressed the universal desire to be remembered: Let me grow old; let me grow wise; Let lines of laughter crease my eyes. Let me spin stories as I rock forth in my chair. Let me knit yards and yards of yesterdays to gather round my knees, And woven in the pattern is a me...