...do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but think of yourself with sober judgment...
Romans 12:3
When I went outside the next day, my life was different.
-Anonymous child celebrity
My youth group took a canoeing trip the Summer of my seventh grade year, somewhere deep in the sticks of Missouri. It was a fun trip. Among the memories are cliff diving, a leach stuck to my ankle, much canoe-tipping revelry, and a rare personal moment in the limelight.
It was the first night of the trip, and the leaders had organized a talent show. Now you have to understand that entering into the seventh grade was a momentous occasion for a boy in my youth group, and this canoe trip a rite of passage. It was at this time that seventh grade girls and boys began to assimilate with one another, as well as with some of the older grades; it's very intimidating indeed. Seventh grade boys are, for apparent reasons, at the bottom of youth group social hierarchy. At least seventh grade girls can still be cute and/or endearing. The boys are, for all intents and purposes, annoying, smelly, uncool, and unattractive in every way; they are the lepers of youth group society.
Somehow, despite knowing full well that the cards were stacked against me, I began to consider how I might perform a "talent", in order to ingratiate myself with the abundantly cooler and cuter older guys and gals. It was 1998, and the Wedding Singer had recently been released. Aside from, in my humble opinion, being in the pantheon of rom-coms, the movie also features an enthralling 80's soundtrack that I had happened to be playing nearly nonstop on my good old Panasonic portable CD-player. In a moment of divine inspiration (for I cannot articulate why), I decided I was going to lip-sing to the song "Money", by The Flying Lizards.
The decision represented a fairly huge gamble on my part. If you don't know the song I'm referring to, knock yourself out. It's a deliciously awkward song. The primary vocalist, if we can call her that, is a woman whom I've always thought sounded of a geriatric persuasion, speaking to rhythm more than singing the lyrics "I want money...", while a dissonant banjo and chorus set the background of the song. It unequivocally does not sound good; it's just...weird. And so I paraded myself out on the stage, wearing shades and a funny hat - a disguise that served to strip my inhibitions as I lipped the lyrics to the song and attempted to provide an interpretive dance.
It was a roaring success. The youth group found it hysterical, and when I was finished, I was received differently than I was before. I was greeted with smiles, giggles, and affirming words of how funny and entertaining my act had been. It was the closest I've ever come to being famous.
What does fame do to a person? What happens when our self-absorbed nature receives confirmation that we are in fact the most important person in the room? What happens when the feeling that everyone is staring at you and observing your every moment is actually true, rather than an intrinsic, narcissistic perception of self-aggrandizement? How in the world could a person not think and feel differently when their phenomenological world - that is to say, their reality surrounding them - drastically changes due to their notoriety? How does a person remain grounded in the circumstance of stardom?
I had an ambivalent relationship with my own moment in the sun. Honestly, I enjoyed the attention. How could I not? I think that deep down, almost all of us are hard-wired, as well as brought up to feel rewarded by another person's praise. It simply feels good to be acknowledged positively. As a words of affirmation guy, I know that this is true for me in a powerful way. Another person's positive regard is like a drug to me...how much more so is the feeling amplified, then, when it's multiplied by a mob? But while it did indeed feel intoxicating to be received so well by my peers, there was another feeling I became aware of after the euphoria of adulation had abated - pressure. I felt, reasonably or not, that people now expected similar things from me. From now on, I had to be funny or entertaining, as that goofy kid on stage was. But I didn't see myself as funny or entertaining, not by a long shot. Sure, I could garner a laugh when given time to concoct something, but intrinsically funny - nay! I knew that I had caught lightning in a bottle. So how did I cope with the pressure I felt? I avoided people. So long as we didn't interact, they couldn't discover that I was a disappointment and a fraud. Like George Costanza leaving his office meeting after the first well-received joke, I desired more than anything to quit on a good note and allow the Legend of Funny Drew to perpetuate itself. My moment of fame, as small and ephemeral as it was, didn't suit me well.
Quarterbacks are the anti seventh grade boy. Whereas the latter are pimply-faced, smelly, and awkward, quarterbacks tend to be winsome, confident, athletic (obviously), and oozing with charisma. Seriously, have you ever taken notice of the seemingly-skewed percentage of good-looking quarterbacks when compared with the rest of the male population at large (which begs research to be done on the topic)?? They seem to be genetically-engineered to dance with fame.
So when Patrick Mahomes II took the nation by storm just within the last three weeks, by putting up gaudy, unprecedented numbers while leading the Kansas City Chiefs to a 3-0 start and becoming the toast of the country, perhaps it was more of the same for him. But I sincerely doubt it. It's one thing to be a great high school quarterback and beloved by a town, it's another thing to be a great college quarterback and embraced by a region...it's another thing entirely to become a star NFL quarterback. What's the difference between Brogan Roback and Aaron Rodgers, you might ask? Brogan might get a free beer in Ypsilanti, Michigan; Rodgers does State Farm commercials and dates girls like Olivia Munn and Danica Patrick.
I had no idea who Patrick Mahomes was prior to the 2017 NFL draft. That's not too surprising, given that it's been years since I've followed college football closely; still, he wasn't a blip on my radar. But the move by the Chiefs to trade up in the draft so that they could take him tenth overall instantaneously changed his obscurity. The franchise hadn't drafted a quarterback in the first round of the draft since 1983, when they took Todd Blackledge in a draft class that also featured Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino. It was a decision that will live in infamy in the eyes of Chiefs faithful. For the better part of twenty years, we witnessed Chiefs teams with exceptional defenses but featuring exceptionally banal quarterback play lose in the playoffs over and over again to teams like the Denver Broncos (Elway), Buffalo Bills (Kelly), and Miami Dolphins (Marino) - whose quarterbacks uncorked magic from their respective right arms time and time again. Perhaps it's taken the formerly gun-shy Chiefs those 34 years to get past the Blackledge debacle and to try again, this time with Mahomes.
Quarterback is undisputedly the most important position in American sports. You can win a championship without an elite quarterback, but I wouldn't recommend attempting it because it's damn difficult. The reason why Mahomes instantly became the most significant player on the Kansas City Chiefs' roster after that fateful April 27, 2017 draft day is because implicitly, the Chiefs were telling the world that they believe they had found their quarterback of the future. Every year there are teams that draft quarterbacks in the first round, hoping that they have found the next John Elway, Peyton Manning, or Aaron Rodgers, and every year, proved later by virtue of time - the unbiased arbiter of success - most of them fail. The science of drafting quarterbacks is an inexact one - a truth the 1983 Chiefs organization knows all too well. Were someone to figure out a fool-proof method of separating the wheat from the chaff, dissuading teams from taking quarterbacks the likes of JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Vince Young, and a bevy of other early draft quarterback fails, that soothsayer would be a very rich person.
And so the idea of Patrick Mahomes the great franchise quarterback was exactly that - an idea. Although it was believed by head coach Andy Reid and general manager Brett Veach, it was merely a theory until Mahomes officially took the field as the Chiefs' starting quarterback this season. Well, through only three games, the results have been staggering. Mahomes has outperformed even the most deluded of fanatic's pipe dreams. His thirteen touchdowns thrown in the first three games of the season are more than any quarterback has ever thrown in that span - surpassing names like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. In his second game of the season, he threw for six touchdowns and only five incompletions (!). Only two other quarterbacks had ever accomplished that feat...yep, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. His zero interceptions through the first three weeks of the 2018 season puts him in the company of Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers - both future Hall of Famers.
His meteoric ascent has coincided with a fever pitch in Kansas City. The fans absolutely love him. Aside from his play, which has been superlative on every level, he seems to have a winning personality the likes that Kansas City made in its own image. He seems self-assured yet humble, demonstrative on the field yet quick to deflect praise off it, an innocent 23-year old yet wise beyond his years. In short, he seems to be everything you would hope for in a quarterback, which has prompted Chiefs' play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus in an interview to utter, "I hope he never changes."
But he will change. He has to. He has become a national sensation. Locally, he is a Beatle. Take a look as he follows backup quarterbacks Chad Henne and Matt McGloin down the escalator at the Kansas University Medical Center, after having visited with several patients. His days of being unnoticed are over. People want to touch him. They want him to bless their babies. He has been trending on Twitter, and his jerseys have been selling out. The world as he knew it is over.
What does fame - and in this case sudden fame - do to a person? In the article Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame, Donna Rockwell of the Michigan School of Professional Psychology and David Giles of the University of Winchester attempted to conduct qualitative research on 15 different celebrities' experiences with fame. Along with some of the commonly held benefits, or "perks" to being famous, such as wealth, access to a world of influence, gratification, and holding lasting cultural impact, the celebrities interviewed also divulged the underbelly of fame, such as giving into temptations, the lack of privacy, isolation, mistrust of others, feeling the need to split from one's true personality when in public, feeling like an object rather than a person, loss of close relationships and family, and lastly, losing perspective on the important things in life, as well as losing touch with oneself.
The last several detractors are what particularly concern me when considering Mahomes. They're what prompted Mitch Holthus to say, "I hope he never changes." As of right now, Mahomes appears to be incredibly grounded, but the world around him has forever changed and it will demand the same measure of dexterity he has exhibited when seemingly solving NFL defenses in the first few games of his young career in order to adapt to the fame that he now faces off the field. From this moment on for the foreseeable future, between his waking and sleeping, each day will be an exercise of navigating this starkly new environment he now finds himself in. It will take constant mental vigilance to stay grounded. One celebrity interviewed put it this way, "You try to put fame in its place because otherwise it will swallow up everything else. It will be totally out of control. It could destroy everything you have or it could make you into a monster. And I think you constantly have to reassess who you are, take fame off of you and make sure that you are centered as a person."
In my own anecdote, I likened affirmation and praise to a drug, and undoubtedly it does trigger reward and pleasure neurotransmitters in the brain such as dopamine. One of the celebrities interviewed agreed, reflecting, "I've been addicted to almost every substance known to man at one point or another, and the most addicting of them all is fame." Unfortunately, this celebrity's experience conflating substances with fame is hardly rare. Another prodigiously talented young quarterback, Johnny Manziel, out of Texas A&M (became the first freshman ever to win NCAA's prestigious Heisman trophy award and became a first round draft pick with the 22nd overall pick by the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 NFL draft), infamously succumbed to addiction to both substances and fame. Manziel seemed to enjoy fame - clubs, money, paparazzi exposure, and rubbing elbows with other celebrities - more than he enjoyed football, and he flamed out at the professional level.
Juxtaposed against Manziel is LeBron James - not a quarterback, but an athlete who became ultra-famous before he even graced an NBA court. With immense pressure heaped on him when he was a high school basketball player to become the next Michael Jordan, James has arguably lived up to the impossible hype surrounding him in his remarkable career thus far. He is most likely the most famous athlete in our nation, possibly even the world, and yet he has a squeaky clean reputation. Not only has James not gotten into an iota of trouble since coming face to face with his own uber-fame, but he has swung the other direction, becoming an articulate and outspoken advocate for social justice, while contributing meaningfully to society. Among a laundry list of meaningful work and altruism, just last year, his Lebron James Family Foundation set up a public elementary school that will provide education for at-risk youths in Akron, while promising to partner with the University of Akron in providing free college tuition to those graduates who finish high school with a 3.0 GPA or above. Consequently, James has been awarded the NBA's J. Walter Kennedy Award for his outstanding service and dedication to his community.
What then, makes the difference between a person going the route of LeBron James and not Johnny Football? The answer is of course more convoluted than we could ever be able to pinpoint, and also seemingly simple when observed at the root. The factors that differentiate Manziel from James are innumerable, and an exercise comparing the two could easily devolve into a nature versus nurture debate. But when oversimplified, doesn't the difference ultimately come down to perspective and decision-making? ...things that LeBron James has managed to hold firmly to and that Johnny Manziel had at least at one point lost.
Perspective and decision-making. Constant mental vigilance is needed when warding off the potential for fame to cause destruction, but surely it cannot be defeated alone. Authentic relationships seem crucial to remaining grounded and connected to who we are and where we've come from - something that perhaps those of us who are not famous take for granted, and that the famous lose sight of. One of the many pitfalls to stardom is that celebrities become surrounded by those who offer disingenuousness. Among the sycophants, the leaches, and the entourages are seldom found anyone who is willing to offer genuine and honest feedback or to invest in the person underneath the facade of fame. Ironic, that in a world where everyone may know their name, there exists perhaps no one who actually knows who they are. One celebrity described the process of re-establishing those constants (for all those LOST viewers), who help to tether a famous person to reality, "The biggest problem was that I had forgotten those who were closest to me. So I had to bring them back into the fold, reattach, and have a better understanding of what they went through. And then I had to build myself up again, but, in conjunction with all of them, not in spite of them. For me, it was a harsh lesson and a tough lesson."
I am not sure how Patrick Mahomes Jr. is responding to his ascension as a superstar, or the pressure of being taxed with becoming the savior of an NFL franchise. No doubt he is in the midst of monumental character change, as he adapts to this brave new world, beset with camera flashes, pointing, ogling, hugging, accosting, and of course, 80,000 fans screaming his name on Fall Sundays and venerating the ground he walks on. Those things will change a man. Here's hoping that he maintains perspective in all of this, that he continues to make good decisions, that he places as much value in genuine relationships as the rest of us have in his golden arm, and that he can successfully adapt to his newfound fame that is sure to only grow larger once he's done eviscerating the Broncos' defense in Denver this Monday night.
Go Chiefs!
Somehow, despite knowing full well that the cards were stacked against me, I began to consider how I might perform a "talent", in order to ingratiate myself with the abundantly cooler and cuter older guys and gals. It was 1998, and the Wedding Singer had recently been released. Aside from, in my humble opinion, being in the pantheon of rom-coms, the movie also features an enthralling 80's soundtrack that I had happened to be playing nearly nonstop on my good old Panasonic portable CD-player. In a moment of divine inspiration (for I cannot articulate why), I decided I was going to lip-sing to the song "Money", by The Flying Lizards.
The decision represented a fairly huge gamble on my part. If you don't know the song I'm referring to, knock yourself out. It's a deliciously awkward song. The primary vocalist, if we can call her that, is a woman whom I've always thought sounded of a geriatric persuasion, speaking to rhythm more than singing the lyrics "I want money...", while a dissonant banjo and chorus set the background of the song. It unequivocally does not sound good; it's just...weird. And so I paraded myself out on the stage, wearing shades and a funny hat - a disguise that served to strip my inhibitions as I lipped the lyrics to the song and attempted to provide an interpretive dance.
It was a roaring success. The youth group found it hysterical, and when I was finished, I was received differently than I was before. I was greeted with smiles, giggles, and affirming words of how funny and entertaining my act had been. It was the closest I've ever come to being famous.
What does fame do to a person? What happens when our self-absorbed nature receives confirmation that we are in fact the most important person in the room? What happens when the feeling that everyone is staring at you and observing your every moment is actually true, rather than an intrinsic, narcissistic perception of self-aggrandizement? How in the world could a person not think and feel differently when their phenomenological world - that is to say, their reality surrounding them - drastically changes due to their notoriety? How does a person remain grounded in the circumstance of stardom?
I had an ambivalent relationship with my own moment in the sun. Honestly, I enjoyed the attention. How could I not? I think that deep down, almost all of us are hard-wired, as well as brought up to feel rewarded by another person's praise. It simply feels good to be acknowledged positively. As a words of affirmation guy, I know that this is true for me in a powerful way. Another person's positive regard is like a drug to me...how much more so is the feeling amplified, then, when it's multiplied by a mob? But while it did indeed feel intoxicating to be received so well by my peers, there was another feeling I became aware of after the euphoria of adulation had abated - pressure. I felt, reasonably or not, that people now expected similar things from me. From now on, I had to be funny or entertaining, as that goofy kid on stage was. But I didn't see myself as funny or entertaining, not by a long shot. Sure, I could garner a laugh when given time to concoct something, but intrinsically funny - nay! I knew that I had caught lightning in a bottle. So how did I cope with the pressure I felt? I avoided people. So long as we didn't interact, they couldn't discover that I was a disappointment and a fraud. Like George Costanza leaving his office meeting after the first well-received joke, I desired more than anything to quit on a good note and allow the Legend of Funny Drew to perpetuate itself. My moment of fame, as small and ephemeral as it was, didn't suit me well.
Quarterbacks are the anti seventh grade boy. Whereas the latter are pimply-faced, smelly, and awkward, quarterbacks tend to be winsome, confident, athletic (obviously), and oozing with charisma. Seriously, have you ever taken notice of the seemingly-skewed percentage of good-looking quarterbacks when compared with the rest of the male population at large (which begs research to be done on the topic)?? They seem to be genetically-engineered to dance with fame.
So when Patrick Mahomes II took the nation by storm just within the last three weeks, by putting up gaudy, unprecedented numbers while leading the Kansas City Chiefs to a 3-0 start and becoming the toast of the country, perhaps it was more of the same for him. But I sincerely doubt it. It's one thing to be a great high school quarterback and beloved by a town, it's another thing to be a great college quarterback and embraced by a region...it's another thing entirely to become a star NFL quarterback. What's the difference between Brogan Roback and Aaron Rodgers, you might ask? Brogan might get a free beer in Ypsilanti, Michigan; Rodgers does State Farm commercials and dates girls like Olivia Munn and Danica Patrick.
I had no idea who Patrick Mahomes was prior to the 2017 NFL draft. That's not too surprising, given that it's been years since I've followed college football closely; still, he wasn't a blip on my radar. But the move by the Chiefs to trade up in the draft so that they could take him tenth overall instantaneously changed his obscurity. The franchise hadn't drafted a quarterback in the first round of the draft since 1983, when they took Todd Blackledge in a draft class that also featured Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino. It was a decision that will live in infamy in the eyes of Chiefs faithful. For the better part of twenty years, we witnessed Chiefs teams with exceptional defenses but featuring exceptionally banal quarterback play lose in the playoffs over and over again to teams like the Denver Broncos (Elway), Buffalo Bills (Kelly), and Miami Dolphins (Marino) - whose quarterbacks uncorked magic from their respective right arms time and time again. Perhaps it's taken the formerly gun-shy Chiefs those 34 years to get past the Blackledge debacle and to try again, this time with Mahomes.
Quarterback is undisputedly the most important position in American sports. You can win a championship without an elite quarterback, but I wouldn't recommend attempting it because it's damn difficult. The reason why Mahomes instantly became the most significant player on the Kansas City Chiefs' roster after that fateful April 27, 2017 draft day is because implicitly, the Chiefs were telling the world that they believe they had found their quarterback of the future. Every year there are teams that draft quarterbacks in the first round, hoping that they have found the next John Elway, Peyton Manning, or Aaron Rodgers, and every year, proved later by virtue of time - the unbiased arbiter of success - most of them fail. The science of drafting quarterbacks is an inexact one - a truth the 1983 Chiefs organization knows all too well. Were someone to figure out a fool-proof method of separating the wheat from the chaff, dissuading teams from taking quarterbacks the likes of JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Vince Young, and a bevy of other early draft quarterback fails, that soothsayer would be a very rich person.
And so the idea of Patrick Mahomes the great franchise quarterback was exactly that - an idea. Although it was believed by head coach Andy Reid and general manager Brett Veach, it was merely a theory until Mahomes officially took the field as the Chiefs' starting quarterback this season. Well, through only three games, the results have been staggering. Mahomes has outperformed even the most deluded of fanatic's pipe dreams. His thirteen touchdowns thrown in the first three games of the season are more than any quarterback has ever thrown in that span - surpassing names like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. In his second game of the season, he threw for six touchdowns and only five incompletions (!). Only two other quarterbacks had ever accomplished that feat...yep, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. His zero interceptions through the first three weeks of the 2018 season puts him in the company of Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers - both future Hall of Famers.
His meteoric ascent has coincided with a fever pitch in Kansas City. The fans absolutely love him. Aside from his play, which has been superlative on every level, he seems to have a winning personality the likes that Kansas City made in its own image. He seems self-assured yet humble, demonstrative on the field yet quick to deflect praise off it, an innocent 23-year old yet wise beyond his years. In short, he seems to be everything you would hope for in a quarterback, which has prompted Chiefs' play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus in an interview to utter, "I hope he never changes."
But he will change. He has to. He has become a national sensation. Locally, he is a Beatle. Take a look as he follows backup quarterbacks Chad Henne and Matt McGloin down the escalator at the Kansas University Medical Center, after having visited with several patients. His days of being unnoticed are over. People want to touch him. They want him to bless their babies. He has been trending on Twitter, and his jerseys have been selling out. The world as he knew it is over.
What does fame - and in this case sudden fame - do to a person? In the article Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame, Donna Rockwell of the Michigan School of Professional Psychology and David Giles of the University of Winchester attempted to conduct qualitative research on 15 different celebrities' experiences with fame. Along with some of the commonly held benefits, or "perks" to being famous, such as wealth, access to a world of influence, gratification, and holding lasting cultural impact, the celebrities interviewed also divulged the underbelly of fame, such as giving into temptations, the lack of privacy, isolation, mistrust of others, feeling the need to split from one's true personality when in public, feeling like an object rather than a person, loss of close relationships and family, and lastly, losing perspective on the important things in life, as well as losing touch with oneself.
The last several detractors are what particularly concern me when considering Mahomes. They're what prompted Mitch Holthus to say, "I hope he never changes." As of right now, Mahomes appears to be incredibly grounded, but the world around him has forever changed and it will demand the same measure of dexterity he has exhibited when seemingly solving NFL defenses in the first few games of his young career in order to adapt to the fame that he now faces off the field. From this moment on for the foreseeable future, between his waking and sleeping, each day will be an exercise of navigating this starkly new environment he now finds himself in. It will take constant mental vigilance to stay grounded. One celebrity interviewed put it this way, "You try to put fame in its place because otherwise it will swallow up everything else. It will be totally out of control. It could destroy everything you have or it could make you into a monster. And I think you constantly have to reassess who you are, take fame off of you and make sure that you are centered as a person."
In my own anecdote, I likened affirmation and praise to a drug, and undoubtedly it does trigger reward and pleasure neurotransmitters in the brain such as dopamine. One of the celebrities interviewed agreed, reflecting, "I've been addicted to almost every substance known to man at one point or another, and the most addicting of them all is fame." Unfortunately, this celebrity's experience conflating substances with fame is hardly rare. Another prodigiously talented young quarterback, Johnny Manziel, out of Texas A&M (became the first freshman ever to win NCAA's prestigious Heisman trophy award and became a first round draft pick with the 22nd overall pick by the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 NFL draft), infamously succumbed to addiction to both substances and fame. Manziel seemed to enjoy fame - clubs, money, paparazzi exposure, and rubbing elbows with other celebrities - more than he enjoyed football, and he flamed out at the professional level.
Juxtaposed against Manziel is LeBron James - not a quarterback, but an athlete who became ultra-famous before he even graced an NBA court. With immense pressure heaped on him when he was a high school basketball player to become the next Michael Jordan, James has arguably lived up to the impossible hype surrounding him in his remarkable career thus far. He is most likely the most famous athlete in our nation, possibly even the world, and yet he has a squeaky clean reputation. Not only has James not gotten into an iota of trouble since coming face to face with his own uber-fame, but he has swung the other direction, becoming an articulate and outspoken advocate for social justice, while contributing meaningfully to society. Among a laundry list of meaningful work and altruism, just last year, his Lebron James Family Foundation set up a public elementary school that will provide education for at-risk youths in Akron, while promising to partner with the University of Akron in providing free college tuition to those graduates who finish high school with a 3.0 GPA or above. Consequently, James has been awarded the NBA's J. Walter Kennedy Award for his outstanding service and dedication to his community.
What then, makes the difference between a person going the route of LeBron James and not Johnny Football? The answer is of course more convoluted than we could ever be able to pinpoint, and also seemingly simple when observed at the root. The factors that differentiate Manziel from James are innumerable, and an exercise comparing the two could easily devolve into a nature versus nurture debate. But when oversimplified, doesn't the difference ultimately come down to perspective and decision-making? ...things that LeBron James has managed to hold firmly to and that Johnny Manziel had at least at one point lost.
Perspective and decision-making. Constant mental vigilance is needed when warding off the potential for fame to cause destruction, but surely it cannot be defeated alone. Authentic relationships seem crucial to remaining grounded and connected to who we are and where we've come from - something that perhaps those of us who are not famous take for granted, and that the famous lose sight of. One of the many pitfalls to stardom is that celebrities become surrounded by those who offer disingenuousness. Among the sycophants, the leaches, and the entourages are seldom found anyone who is willing to offer genuine and honest feedback or to invest in the person underneath the facade of fame. Ironic, that in a world where everyone may know their name, there exists perhaps no one who actually knows who they are. One celebrity described the process of re-establishing those constants (for all those LOST viewers), who help to tether a famous person to reality, "The biggest problem was that I had forgotten those who were closest to me. So I had to bring them back into the fold, reattach, and have a better understanding of what they went through. And then I had to build myself up again, but, in conjunction with all of them, not in spite of them. For me, it was a harsh lesson and a tough lesson."
I am not sure how Patrick Mahomes Jr. is responding to his ascension as a superstar, or the pressure of being taxed with becoming the savior of an NFL franchise. No doubt he is in the midst of monumental character change, as he adapts to this brave new world, beset with camera flashes, pointing, ogling, hugging, accosting, and of course, 80,000 fans screaming his name on Fall Sundays and venerating the ground he walks on. Those things will change a man. Here's hoping that he maintains perspective in all of this, that he continues to make good decisions, that he places as much value in genuine relationships as the rest of us have in his golden arm, and that he can successfully adapt to his newfound fame that is sure to only grow larger once he's done eviscerating the Broncos' defense in Denver this Monday night.
Go Chiefs!
