Celebrity Breakdowns: What Can We Learn?

It’s one thing to hear the latest escapades of a superstar turning ugly.  The spectacle of some of the more public breakdowns tends to bring out the voyeur in all of us, and sometimes, the more extreme the behavior, the more compelling the story.  Taking a brief look at some of the recent celebrity breakdowns reveals some rather spectacularly bad behavior, and the press is so keyed in on some ongoing meltdowns, that we might stop and wonder why it’s so fascinating.

It might be related to the notion of emotional balance, something everyone can relate to.  Staying in balance under stressful circumstances and conditions is a challenge, certainly.  On some days, everyone has struggles, and reaching this state of balance is a goal that most of us work at.  This might be the key to why it’s so interesting when stars have difficult times.  These are the people that the culture tends to hold up as examples, the ones who live the good life, with fame and fortune landed firmly on their doorsteps.  And when this good life becomes precarious, it’s a very gentle reminder that everyone is in the same boat.

It’s also a reminder that there are plenty of options for maintaining a level of good health that will also help with all kinds of emotional balance.  Sites like www.prohealth.com offer products that serve to keep the body and the mind running efficiently.  Making any kind of commitment to health has benefits, and some of these are more obvious than others.  It’s also important to remember that a healthy body and calm mind are more valuable than anything that riches can ever offer.  Understanding that celebrities have cracks in their armor, too, can teach us that no one is ever immune, but that balance is always possible.

Perhaps one of the most important lessons we can learn from these celebrity meltdowns is related to our own internal myths.  If Hollywood is in the business of making our own stories visible on the screen, then these stories of crashes are just as touching as the stories in the films, where our heroes and heroines are performing courageous acts for us.  So when Robert Downey, Jr. starts living a sober and healthy life after a few years in the spotlight for bad behavior, it’s a redemption story that redeems all of us, and teaches us all that we are enormously complex beings, capable of bad behavior but also capable of extraordinary everyday feats.