{"id":35345,"date":"2023-11-15T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/actor-couldnt-stop-chasing-success-dragon\/"},"modified":"2023-11-15T09:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T09:30:00","slug":"actor-couldnt-stop-chasing-success-dragon","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/actor-couldnt-stop-chasing-success-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Couldn\u2019t Stop Chasing the Success Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, actor Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute in the TV series The Office<\/em>, said the following:<\/p>\n\n

\n

When I signed up for The Office<\/em>, it’s like, “I want to buy a house.” I wasn’t thinking about giving laughter as a therapeutic remedy and a balm and a salve to a hurting populace … I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough.<\/p>\n

This is what I was looking at: I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money working with Steve Carell, and Jenna Fisher, and John Krasinski … I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it. I was thinking about, “Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career?” (He explained later in the interview how he couldn’t stop chasing the dragon that is success.)<\/p>\n

When I was on The Office<\/em>, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions. I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and never enough has helped us as a species.<\/p>\n

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