Ugh. August 12, 2014 ……….. the day after celebrity Robin
Williams allegedly committed suicide. I’ve had to turn off the news, the radio,
and the social media watershed as they turn their intensely myopic and often
voraciously repugnant eye to the post mortem ……………. They will now pick apart
this celebrity’s life and career until they ‘lay bare the truth’, ‘expose the
issues’, ‘make sense of this tragedy’ …………. But all they will find is sad dry bones
because the media machine won’t stop to consider when the REAL man died. No one can see when his light started to flicker and no one can know when it finally went out.
There is no answer for this, no resolution, and the
heartless world of fame cannot comprehend a person with a heart. It’s all very
simple really. He died, like so many do, in terrible pain, in terrible loneliness,
in terrible despair, and ultimately in terrible violence. Some time ago I wrote
a blog entry called 40 things I know by
40 and I included this “I love to laugh. It’s my favourite activity. I wish
it were an Olympic event. I think great comedians are the highest form of our
‘so called’ evolved species, because the best ones are heart and soul and joy
and intelligence and observation and truth at the point of intersection. And
that’s amazing.” And I still believe it. Comedians seem to be shining lights of
genuineness in a sea of fake. Celebrity and Fame are almost the new religion
and we worship dutifully at it’s alter. We place our famous gods on pedestals
and many feed upon attention, but among them are those who see there is no
ladder to climb down, and they starve. I think many of those lights are
comedians and that is why so very many of them end up dead. Whether the
instrument of their death is drugs, or alcohol, or food, or sex, or a willful
act of violence the end is the same.
Why were they funny in the first place then? Why get
yourself famous if you can’t handle it? These and other insensitive questions
will be asked. Finding the funny in life is a coping mechanism for those who
feel a lot, have very open hearts, and are cursed with keen observational
powers; especially where they observe pain, oppression, irony, villainy,
cruelty, and I think (above all) how human beings diverge from their real purpose:
which surely is simple joyful and kind living. Finding the funny is an act of
faith when you feel over whelmed by the experiences of life. It is an affirmation
that life has beauty and purpose. When they share the funny it nourishes themselves
and others and sometimes they change minds and hearts, and when you change minds and hearts you change the world. Finding the funny is powerful. Robin Williams himself said “Comedy is acting out Optimism” and I
don’t think it can be said better than that. I LOVE comedians, and am as guilty
as anyone in this desire to see and hear more of what they have to say, but at
some point the machine wants too much, and they give too much of it away.
Everyone has to hold on to their own light ………….. A candle may be able to light
a 1000 more and never burn out faster (as the proverb says), but it might be
snuffed out by 1000s of grabbing hands.
So turn it off. Turn away from this fortune making
examination of his death and go put on Mrs Doubtfire (or whatever your
favourite was) and then …………… then go
out and light some candles with that perfect spark of joy.
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