I have been there, and I know very well how it feels! The 15 minutes of fleeting fame, which some of us are destined to enjoy once in a lifetime, happens to be just a chance occurrence in most cases, cooked and thrown our way by the Creator. When a thing like this is taking place, our sense of happiness thoroughly intensifies, and we start living in a totally unusual world of dreams and surrealistic mirages as if we have found ourselves in seventh heaven.

We begin thinking that our talent and personality stop being our own property and they tend to belong to our fan-club, to our people and to the humanity in general. And we are getting used to our popularity so much that at a certain point in time we start taking the whole thing for granted. This is where the catastrophe is unleashed; this is when the megalomania is taking over; this is how the sense of frustration gets hold on our bones. And right at the zenith of blissful self-indulgence and happy-go-lucky basking in the accidental rays of fame, the limelight starts dimming out. And it becomes bleaker and paler every second, which we start counting like crazy, as if trying to extend the validity of the lucky incident into time and space. In Georgia for example, ‘15 minutes of fame’ is a special case – it has turned into one of the most clearly-cut subjects of all-national concern and preoccupation, especially among the young. Making one’s name and face known to the public has become a cherished goal and direction of thought for most of the young men and women here. Grabbing the ’15 minutes’ has taken precedence over any other aspiration which has an ability to move a person forward. To catch it, the entire nation is singing and dancing and making tricks of any possible form and content. Being rich and comfortable is no longer as important as being famous. The fame! This is what counts most of all and makes us tick. Becoming just another talk of the town, or more so – talk of the nation, takes a lot of time and energy, as if this is the key to a better future. ‘15 minutes of fame’ seems to have become something more valuable than love and friendship, far more expensive than a good education, and even more precious than one’s own mom and dad. Being famous is a dream of dreams. It helps, encourages and facilitates the steps ahead. Some even spend money to buy ‘15 minutes of fame’ without knowing whether it might be an asset or a liability. They just buy it because the product has gone beyond any limits of marketable value. They buy it and they don’t even know how to make any use of it. It simply feels good – that’s the answer! They merely don’t know the magnitude of frustration when it starts fading away and turns into a funny nothingness. The buyers of ‘15 minutes of fame’ have no idea what a waste of time it is and how futile the used efforts turn out be when the moment of better judgment comes. They simply have no clew what a fragile thing a talent is, and how it should be first detected and then nursed. ‘15 minutes of fame’ is a killer of a healthy vision and an unavoidable source of pain at a certain moment when we know that the valuable time of our life was just squandered on acquiring the fame without which we could have done just as well and just as easy. And this is saying the man who has had a lot of it. And not only here, and not only once! You see!