I remember a guy while I was at the ANU law school. His name was Leonard Faraday, or better known as, Lenny the Bear. He was our Robin Williams: always funny, very nice and loved by everyone. He was always the comedian that lightened up any conversation with his smile and demeanour. But he struggled with the course. More than once he had borrow my notes or had me go through our work with him. And he borrowed everybody’s notes. Once, he feigned pneumonia to try to skip an exam. But the faculty did not buy it, and neither did we. The expectations of him from his family and perhaps the wider Jewish community which he belonged to in Melbourne was the burden he carried. He perhaps felt he did not measure up. And we were too young and stupid to recognise the tortured soul who was amongst us. We were too warped up within ourselves to care. We often made jokes about him and after we all went our separate ways at the end of 1989, I heard that he had gotten married to a girl from a rich Jewish family, and that he was going to be rich from his invention, which was a board game that did see production. Some years later, I heard that he had hung himself. I was deeply shocked. My reaction was to ask why did Lenny, the funniest guy in law school, felt so depressed that he would kill himself? It is only now that I understand that Lenny’s sense of humour was his cover, his protection for his own sense of insecurity and lack of self-worth. I wish that we had all been aware of what was going on inside him and had cared for him back in the ‘80s. He is the first among the class of 1989 to have died. Now that we know better, we must watch out for those who are depressed and need our support, for otherwise, there can be a tragedy around the corner.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 01:12:30 +0000
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