Celebrity

With all the recent news on Twitter and other social media outlets about celebrities and what they think about current social issues, I thought I’d take a minute to look at exactly what celebrity means.

It comes from late Middle English (in the sense ‘solemn ceremony’): from Old French celebrite or Latin celebritas, from celeber, celebr- ‘frequented or honored’.

So by those standards, the people we currently hold up as celebrities don’t really deserve that honorific. They may be famous, which is more being well known, but honored? Nah, not so much.

You can watch the groupthink with today’s celebrities, lately with the shift from loving Elon Musk a few years ago to loathing him today because he bought Twitter and refuses to let them have their private platform.

Here’s another graphic that shows how much the word celebrity has been used through the years…

We’ve created these monsters of vanity and self-absorption. They are nothing more than court jesters in the kingdom of thinking people. They are no more important than you and their opinions count no more than yours.

Focus on the true celebrities in your life, the people you truly want to celebrate and honor. Your spouse, your kids, family and friends. Hold them up and treat them the same way some of you treat an actor that memorizes a few lines, gets a following and think that makes them wise enough to have some sort of authority. Nope.

As a leader, be famous and be a celebrity for treating people with respect, growing a team, being the example and living a life of honor and integrity.

Lead forward.

Semper Fortis

Chief Chuck