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Robin Williams, thanks for everything!
“I used to think the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.” – Robin Williams, 1952 – 2014
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Single people often worry no one loves us and we suffer. Robin was universally loved and still suffered. Such a shame.
Also had been currently married (and twice before) with many children.
I saw this on Facebook today:
“Mork & Mindy: ‘In Mork We Trust’ (#1.21) (1979)
Orson: The report, Mork.
Mork: This week I discovered a terrible disease called loneliness.
Orson: Do many people on Earth suffer from this disease?
Mork: Oh yes sir, and how they suffer. One man I know suffers so much he has to take a medication called bourbon. Even that doesn’t help very much because then he can hear paint dry.
Orson: Does bedrest help?
Mork: No because I’ve heard that sleeping alone is part of the problem. You see, Orson, loneliness is a disease of the spirit. People who have it think that no one cares about them.
Orson: Do you have any idea why?
Mork: Yes sir, you can count on me. You see, when children are young, they’re told not to talk to strangers. When they go to school, they’re told not to talk to the person next to them. Finally when they’re very old, they’re told not to talk to themselves, who’s left?
Orson: Are you saying Earthlings make each other lonely?
Mork: No sir, I’m saying just the opposite. They make themselves lonely – they’re so busy looking out for number one that there’s not enough room for two.
Orson: It’s too bad everybody down there can’t get together and find a cure.
Mork: Here’s the paradox, sir, because if they did get together, they wouldn’t need one.
Seems appropriate…
I’ve thought about Robin Williams every day since the horrible news. He was such a treasure.
I have been thinking about Robin Williams so much as well. There are so many thoughts that run through my mind and I was having a hard time grasping any single thread. I finally stopped crying for him and his family and caught my breath and zeroed in on what I was struggling with.
One, here he is one of the most upbeat (to our knowledge), genuinely happy and authentically nice celebrities in the media realm. He’d been famous for a very long time so was not unfamiliar with its pressures. Yet he found life to be too dark and too hard. He, so loved and respected, the person that literally peoples’ faces would light up when they saw him, found the day to day too much to bear and took his own life. If a man with so much good fortunate and truly the wind to his back was struggling so profoundly, what hope do I or anyone else has of just grinding it out day after day? If Robin Williams is being crushed, how can I possibly stand? That’s one.
The second is while he was making us laugh and smile and forget our woes, were we in some way his? People talk about watching his movies and comedy specials and remember the good times and all that but I can’t feel good about it if those times were his bad times. That perhaps his ability to deflect his depression by making us laugh alienated him to us even more. It makes me so sad to think that while we were all yucking it up and screaming “Good morning Vietnam!”, someone we loved was sinking further into a personal abyss and we missed it.
Last night, I spoke with my friend, who is a therapist. Apparently, a lot of his clients have expressed similar sentiments as you. The bottom line, he repeated, is that Robin Williams had been depressed for a very long time. And when you’re depressed, all that good stuff – the talent, the fame, the money, the love, just doesn’t feel like enough.
I find his death very hard to process. I grew up watching his career (and I am now 50). I literally burst into sobs when I heard he had killed himself. The tragedy that a man who shined so much joy and laughter on the world could not do it for himself kills me. His humor and his films got me through some very dark times in my life, in fact, he was the only comedian who could laugh me out of the blues. No one else could make me laugh when I was blue–only Robin. We will never know all the reasons why he lost his battle with his depression, but if anything good can come from it, maybe it will make all of us more conscious of our fellow human beings and their moods. Check on your friends time to time, never assume everything is always okay. If some lives are saved because we become better educated about depression, then this sweet funny man will not have died in vain.
Dead Poets Society was on TV this weekend. It was so sad to see it.