FAME vs FUNDAMENTAL

Very often there's this problem distinguishing between fame and fundamentals, between those who are briefly famous and those who become fundamentally important. Learning the difference could save us a good many mistakes. The pages of history bulge with examples...

A quick test: Can you remember Marcus Coelius, Caravaggio, Thomas Crapper, or Francis X. Bushman? Now can you remember Buddha, Aristotle, Shakespeare or Einstein?

Actually the first group were remarkably more famous in their lifetime than after their death. Coelius a brilliant Roman general...Caravaggio a celebrated Renaissance painter... Crapper a highly successful inventor.... Bushman the most popular film star of his time. Today hardly any remembered.

What the first group had in common was their fleeting fame. The second, their enduring concern for the fundamentals of life and living. How helpful it would be if we were more adept at making these distinctions before rather than after the fact.

Oh wait....! Thomas Crapper's temporary fame has become memorable. He invented the flush toilet, and to this very day we remember him whenever we shout the universal expletive: "Oh crap....!"