Doesn't Matter

It used to be that when I would fly I would always buy a People Magazine or an US Weekly. I really liked flipping through and seeing all the gossip and the clothing and the pictures. So when I came into Dallas last Wednesday, the girl next to me on the plane asked me if I wanted her US Weekly. I hadn't really had time to even think about magazines, let alone buy one. I'd run to get some food and then caught my connecting flight from Denver to Dallas. And Provo didn't have a magazine stand or anywhere to purchase salacious celebrity gossip rags.

So I took the US Weekly. And I read it. You know what? Turns out I don't care about celebrity gossip. In fact, as it turns out, I kind of hate it. Not that I hate celebrities. I mean, they are just people making a living and what not. And I support movies, books, music, etc. So I don't resent what they do. I just don't really know why it matters so much to us. Why do we care that someone famous is breaking up with someone else who happens to be famous? Why do we care if someone famous takes their child to a local parade for the 4th of July?

I mean really, why do we care? It just doesn't matter at all. And what it left me with wasn't good. It left me feeling sort of empty...like we invest all this money and time and effort into following these normal people around and catalog their lives like it is so important what they wear or who they date or don't date. But it isn't important. Why do we feel the need to be voyeurs? People date, get married, divorce, quit jobs, fight, grow old, get messed up, join religions, go for long walks on the beach...but we don't go around snapping pictures and documenting the lives of the regular folk. Even though it is all the same. I can hear the same sort of gossip among my own family and friends...the people who actually matter to me. And I wouldn't want their problems or my problems being spread around like that. Or even just their private happy moments.

I guess I'm getting old. But I'm starting to see that some things that might seem like harmless amusement might not be so harmless after all. And maybe we shouldn't - or I shouldn't - support those things because they don't matter.