Part of our pain today, our dismay in it all, is that we are mad at Robin Williams for taking his own life, yet we are afraid to express that out loud. We are taught not to speak ill of the dead. We are told depression is an illness. We are taught that suicide is somehow an unapproachable subject. We fear being publically politically incorrect. We are afriad we will be judged by saying I am wounded that he did this to himself. Well, I am wounded. I am hurt. I am sad. I am greiving. These emotions are honest and heartfelt. Its very true that I never knew the man. We never met, just as most of you never knew him face to face. I recognized his genius. I appreciated his body of work. I delighted in his insights into the world. He was still a stranger to me, though. Yet, there is an outrage within me that someone so full of light could not see that within himself in his darkest hour. No hopeful thought could distract him from his task. No voice was louder than the darkness that took him. If he, whos soul was so beautifully made and publicly admired, could not hold up against that tide, how then will I muddle through the next time I get caught underneath the heel of hopelessness? That is the question lurking under the veiled sorrows of us all. It takes away my illusion of being bullet-proof. But the thing we all forget when we watch the picture screen is that the man was a professional illusionist. His fish-bowl life he presented to the world was not the man inside. No one who lives in a glass house is able to be seen through to the soul. No man in his nakedness can turn himself inside out to expose the entire truth of his inner spirit no matter how many words he may try to use to express those inner thoughts. In each of us, we let very few others past the foyer of our minds, let alone into the depths of doubt, regret, depression, loneliness, and sorrow. Those are as private as our thoughts of love and lust and yearning. Sadly, we as humans have descended to the pretentious level of ambivalence as our go-to face with one another as polite folk do. It is our flaw, our failure as spirited caring ascentient beings. It is the little white lie we sell ourselves as etiquette. It keeps us from being honest and reaching out with truth, whether it be sad or glorious. I lost a hero, not to war, not to righteousness, not to cancer, not to an ill-fated accident. I lost a hero to his own hand. Why? Because he lost the war within. I understand that place that he was at, that choice he made, that moment when the only control he felt he had left was his next breath. (Even accidental suffocations start out with the goal of facing death one on one.) I do not condone it in any way, shape, or form. I do not condemn him either, because it is not for me to judge. I do not know his last thought, the last prayer upon his lips. God does. That is enough for all of us to grasp. I am just saying here that I am hurt. Not pointing fingers, laying blame, making excuses, exhonorating anyone. Im saying that I lost a hero yesterday. I lost a light I looked to for comfort now and then. There is a hole in my soul because of this. It may have been digitally created due to years of silver screen encounters with Robin Williams, but it is real within me none-the-less. We all think about suicide now and then. Anyone who says they dont is a bold faced liar. We all look at our own death from time to time. We weigh the inevitable against the improbable and also explore the possible in it all. We are all put into situations that force us momentarily to consider contingencies. Whether we are repulsed or fascinated by those concepts is where the thin red line begins form. The thing we are having a problem with today is that we all want to blame someone for the agony we are left in. Robins actions hurt us all but we are told we cannot rage at Robin, we can only pity him. That, to me is a far worse fate than death itself - to be pitied into eternity. Ours is not to examine his heart in all of this. His heart was his alone. To honor his memory and heal ourselves, we must examine our own hearts. We must put him into proper perspective over the days ahead. We must remember how the world is greiving his loss and carry that feeling tucked away inside us, to remind us of the tremendous pain we will put others through any time we consider dancing with death ourselves. Let him live on inside us as a cautionary tale, a reminder that just as each coin has two sides, so do our hearts. Let his smile be what you recall when darkness rolls in over you. Let him be a reminder to love the world and bring it joy with every breath you take. Breathe in deep now and taste the living world that he left behind. Now thank God and appreciate that you still have the breath to see another day.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:01:28 +0000
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