As you may have suspected, many people have been asking us about Michael Jackson. Since we didn’t know him, I try not to speculate on what happened until we know the official and final toxicology report from the coroner says. I’ve listened to a lot of ideas and suspicions and until today I felt like there was nothing for me to discuss. Today I heard a woman who called in to the Gayle King show http://www.oprah.com/oafhost/gking that airs on Oprah Radio on XM radio (a show that I absolutely love!) She said that she didn’t realize until she watched the memorial about Michael Jackson what a great childhood she had while growing up. Now that is worth talking about.
No matter how you feel about MJ, his music, his legacy, his dancing, his lawsuits, his lifestyle or his death, what we do know is that he started working at a young age and continued for his entire life. Child stars have a lifestyle that changes them in ways that most of us cannot imagine. As most of you know, I worked on a TV show with child stars in the 90’s and have since worked with several others from the 60’s & 70’s. As teachers we have had many parents who were once child stars and now we have child stars in our classrooms. Every one is very different, but each and every one of them is changed by the world watching them. It is not all the glamour and glitz that we see on the red carpet.
Every time a kid tells me they just want to be a star, my question is, “What do you think that means?” Most of them reply, “Lots of money and cool stuff”. What they don’t see is how hard it is to go to the grocery store or eat a meal without getting your picture taken and then have a blogger write about what you put in your mouth and how you wiped your mouth after you ate. They don’t know what it’s like to have people go through their trash or have to pay extra for security everywhere you go. The show Hannah Montana deals with the issue of stardom in a very humorous way by living normally and working in disguise.
A child star becomes a new creation based on the reaction of the audience, and that is what happened to Michael Jackson. He became someone that was created, and had a very difficult time living life the way most of us do. While so many of us complain about our childhood, we have two choices about what to do with that upbringing: we can complain and stay victimized by it or we can move forward and live a proactive life. How much negative energy goes into lamenting the past? How much positive energy can go into moving forward? Can we overcome those challenges instead of being incapacitated by them? How much negative energy from your past do you project onto other people and your family? I’m asking everyone, good childhood or bad, to keep moving forward. Regardless of what we think of Mr. Jackson, we did get a chance to reflect on our own upbringing and compare it to his. This may be the best lesson learned: how to live life to the fullest; because when you stand in someone else’s shoes, your life may be better than you realize.
