Subject: Ben Stein

This has been sitting in my box for a while. I wish I would have read it sooner!

Ben Stein's Last Column

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column for the online
website called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of
Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from
around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other
things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of
your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...
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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I
put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is
"eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing
this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved
writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and
the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while
better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still
brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw
Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right
before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an
elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.
But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood
stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly
people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man
or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in
front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all
look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane
luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone
bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not
riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained
in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese
girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any
longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked
his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met
by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam
Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a
road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S.
soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of
unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He
pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish
weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two
of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for
the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our
magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay
but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines
and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor
values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that
who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen
and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they
will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who
have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers
and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic
children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World
Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a
real hero.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens
to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when we
turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could
ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire
ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power
over to Him.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that
matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another
way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier
or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as
good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as
Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above
all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to
be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well
with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I
cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed
with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and
then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers
in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived
to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in
return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has
placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

Most are so busy with being "important" that it is much more efficient for them to throw some money to charities than spending a few hours with them. They have good intention, but to me it is still a partial intention.

To me heroes are those willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill their commitments inspite of any and all obstacles.

The most powerful realization he has are these statements below.

"We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when we turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will."

I truly believing in this statement and has been living inside this commitment for years now. Spiritually and serving God's will are my priority.

If we could understand this and being supportive of each other's commitments instead of our individual's thoughts and wants. Thoughts and wants are weak and worthless when we can move mountains utilizing our commitments.

Any person who are generous, loving, supportive and contributing toward others are on my heroes list.

Thanks for the post, I know the feeling, I too have had a rough month and I have been at the end of my ropes. It does really bring to light the real meaning of our existance.

I have a strong faith, always have. I pray for all of us all the time. Sometimes it is not always clear, but He seems to know when I have had about all I can handle.

I was at that limit on Saturday. I wrote a letter, in some ways it was out of pure frustratrion. I always say that when one door closes God always opens another, and at 3:00 today he opened the door real wide. Unexpectedly I got a call that I feel will change my life.

I have written many letters to many people, I have even gotten alot of responses, but this was the first one that was willing to act and understood the urgency. I hope in a few weeks I will be able to share some really good news. This door could be very big.

But it is important not to lose faith. We might not think He is there for us but He is. My youngest son always asks me what I think God has put him on this earth to do, and I alwasy tell him that he gave you a compassionate heart to help those that are less fortunate.