Anderson Cooper, known to many of us as an intrepid reporter of several decisive national and international events as well as a correspondent for the CBS news program Sixty Minutes, recently published a joint memoir with his equally famous mother, Gloria Vanderbilt.  In a documentary made to accompany the memoir, Anderson offers a telling observation of his mom.  She is, he said, "an emissary from a distant star, marooned on this planet and trying to make sense of it all."
     In the public eye since birth, Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress to a vast fortune and whose name was later attached to a pair of blue jeans, has never led a "normal" life like most of the rest of us.  How could she?  If we are not "celebrities," we cannot really know what fame is like.  While it seems glamorous and dashing, it is often laced with immense angst and loneliness.  "Who am I?," has many a "famous" person asked.  "Am I really marooned on planet Earth?"
     Unlikely, of course.  Perhaps Cooper's point is that although all of us are trying to make sense of this existence, it is the famous who maybe feel the most unequipped to do so:  are they only here for others' pleasure?  For that matter, what do any of us mean? Are we all marooned in this existence?  After all, none of us made a choice to be here.
     Planets near, planets far:  unless the cosmos has a larger and transcendent purpose, regardless of who we are and where we are from, we are nothing more than vacuous wisps of materiality in a vast, impenetrable, and unexplainable sense of being.