You Might Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.

<p><a href='https://dailystoic.com/marcus-aurelius/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=never-be-famous'>Marcus Aurelius</a> talked a lot about fame. He called it a worthless clacking of tongues and liked to point out things like <a href='https://dailystoic.com/on-a-long-enough-timeline-we-are-all-blips/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=never-be-famous'>how few people remember the emperors who preceded him</a>, or how the generations to come will be the same annoying people he knows now. It’s easy to picture him writing these things in times where he caught himself falling for the allure of fame, of power, of how history might remember him. </p><p>Don’t we all fall for it? It <em>is</em> alluring. But if we’re honest with ourselves, it isn’t the fame we really want. it’s the validation that our lives are meaningful. Praise, recognition, millions of followers on Instagram, we think, are proof that we matter. And until we get those things, we’re not always so sure we do.</p><p>Emily Esfahani Smith wrote an amazing piece in the <em>New York Times</em>, titled <a href='https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/middlemarch-college-fame.html?mcubz=1'>“You’ll Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.”</a>. Reminding us of Marcus in the way Emily too said that fame is a foolish pursuit and not where meaning lies, <a href='https://dailystoic.com/emily-esfahani-smith/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=never-be-famous'>we reached out to her for an interview</a>. We asked Emily for advice on finding meaning—and how Stoicism can help us get there. She shared the opinion of the 20th-century psychologist Erik Erikson, who said that a flourishing, meaningful life is one of “generativity”: </p><p><em>“When we’re young, we’re supposed to figure out who we are and what our purpose is. As we get older, we’re supposed to shift the focus from ourselves to others and be ‘generative.’ That is, we’re supposed to give back, especially to younger generatio