'I wanna be famous!' - An insight

I made my television debut as a four year old on ITV Meridian in 1999. Catastrophically shy with a straight black bob and flyaway hair sloping in front of my eyes, this was my lasting image - the way I would be seen by thousands of home owners up and down Britain.

"Je m'appelle Lau-rhuh!" I said, into the camera, not much louder than a whisper. 

And that was it. The sound-bite. Shier than shy but what did it matter? I had said my piece and now I was famous. 

Isn't that what everybody wanted? At one point in time. To be famous. A glitzy film career. A job as a life-long singer. An actress.

I know that's what I had once wanted. When I heard the tale of my first 'interview' on TV at a French nursery, I wanted to do that forever. To be on TV. 

But what's that kind of fame when people are homeless? What purpose does a star on Hollywood boulevard serve when wars rip through innumerable countries? What use is seeing your name roll on the end credits of a film when there are children without enough to eat?

I know it's not our fault. Those thoughts and dreams are human nature. And it's not necessarily the majority of people. But how different would the world be if young people these days strove, with everything they owned to be aid workers, scientists or peace leaders? What importance would 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' be then?

It's just a thought.

I've been writing this post for a couple of days. Every time I've sat down to add to it, my mind has been plagued with Syria. I usually sit in the evenings to write and it's precisely this time that Sky news is on in our house. I could turn it off, but, in a weird way, it seems like a betrayal. Like turning my back. 

So when I sit down, all that seems to radiate is the horror unfolding in the light of the chemical attacks. When I try to think of more things to say to embellish the blog post, anything I pen seems synical. Irrelevant. It seems so sad to me that I can be writing, blogging, publishing posts that have the ability to reach out to thousands of people across the web (across the world) and not even worry about anything else apart from how many people read these words and how that's made them feel. 

There's not much of a point to this post. There's no underlying value I want to share. Just a thought that's manifested over the days. What, however, I do hope is that, today, like me, this post makes you think. Because if that's what it does, then, to my unknown motive, it's done justice.