CNN reporter Richard Quest, the husky and boisterous-voiced British business traveler expert, was the great cup of coffee to drink. When you’re experiencing jet lag after flying 8 to 15 hours from the United States the night before, this human coffee bean could help you walk out the door of your first encounter with your eyes wide open. Covering everything from how to overcome technical challenges with your black berry or laptop, with strange but useful devices, to keeping your love affair alive during those times when you were thousands of miles away from home, Quest had the answer or you. showed how. The fearless devil that he was, he would demonstrate one adventure after another, proving once and for all that the business traveler is someone who lives a fun life. It challenged the business traveler to go beyond the norm, the mundane, and experience new heights when on the road while doing work. His latest Dare Devil adventure, however, went too far!
In April this year, it was widely reported in the media that Quest was arrested in Central Park for loitering after hours and criminal possession of a controlled substance. He admitted that he had some crystal meth in his pocket and later the New York Post reported that Quest had a rope tied around his neck that was tied to his genitals. Police reported that he had a sex toy in his boot. Whatever Quest was doing, it was surely something in the realm of the corporate freakazoid.
Quest agreed with the judge to undergo drug rehab. Obviously, CNN is embarrassed and probably angry at the disgraced reporter. The question is what went wrong? Quest joins the list of others like former sportscaster and Inside Edition reporter Pat O’Brien and his dirty voicemails he left while drunk telling friends from his phone book that he craved prostitutes and drugs. Gary Collins was arrested for drunk driving. Remember in 1998 when sportscaster Marv Albert fell from grace as one of the Dons of the sports casting world with his sex scandal? He was accused of biting his ex-girlfriend on the back when he threw her on the bed to have sex.
What could be going wrong with these men and so many others in the media spotlight is perhaps the loss of something very basic: A LOSS OF YOURSELF. Famous journalist and writers Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hunter S. Thompson, who had an insatiable appetite for alcohol and drugs, did their best drunk and drugged, but both Hemingway and Thompson died horribly by suicide; Hemingway used his favorite shotgun to do it. Thompson shot himself in the head while talking to his wife on the phone.
Losing yourself is hard to imagine when you have the world at your feet. As you rise to the top of fame in various walks of life, being excused from all kinds of bad behavior becomes the norm. No responsibility is recorded on the part of the individual at the top or the people watching and sometimes glorifying them for being in the spotlight. Losing yourself is even deeper than that. Loss of self sometimes occurs because the person never developed a sense of self upon reaching the top. The person’s focus was always on externalities: achieving fame and fortune and one of the greatest aphrodisiac POWER! Power for the person who loses himself is defined by his own weaknesses, weaknesses and secret or dark struggles that are often born from childhood or from a traumatic experience. Hemingway’s mother Grace Hall dressed him as a girl in her youth. He never forgave her for this.
Unresolved problems with a loss of sense of self is something we are witnessing frequently. Rather than being media voyeurs reviewing the lives of movie stars, singers, professional and college athletes, politicians and business executives, we don’t stop to think that perhaps the tragic and humiliating experiences these people are having could be, somehow, little reflections of our life. own lives. Some of you reading this might say, “I’m not a freak, I’m not taking drugs, or I’m out of control.” You may not be. You may never be. However, the lives of the successful, rich and famous can still be teachers for us to view our lives from a cliff looking down assuring ourselves as we experience life; particularly success, we do not decide to jump off the cliff thinking that angels will catch us because we tempt fate in some shape or form. Perhaps there is pain in our own lives that we have not reconciled from or healed. Then we hide it. Digging a six-foot grave in hopes of burying our pain forever? Guess what comes from the dead that haunts us in the craziest ways, ways we could never have imagined.
Richard Quest began to test his destiny when he began to dance with drugs and who knows possibly other addictions. Perhaps your childhood has a deep, dark secret that you never came to terms with or never healed; instead, he could have buried his pain in his own grave and began to focus defensively on his success. His crazy style that he developed was a nice distraction for the real Richard Quest. Perhaps he battled these demons until his success made it so easy to succumb to fake painkillers? The success of Ernest Hemingway and others made it easier for him to drink to his subconsciousness.
It is really sad when men and women like this fall from their pinnacle, but as they fall they become faint memories unless of course they write books or gain recognition. We never stop to think about what was really going on with the sad and lonely. The bottom line is that at their lowest point these men in this piece have or had death wishes, literally and figuratively. Their loss of themselves and their outlandish behaviors and lifestyles were cries for help. But no one was listening or really cared.
