Robin Williams

To be honest, I was never a big fan of his.  I recall as a kid being more than a little uneasy with his sweaty, manic, stream-of-consciousness HBO special that aired in the mid-to-late-70s.  His ADD-based humor never gripped me as, say, the more restrained goofiness of a young Steve Martin or Bill Murray.  And his schmaltzy comedy a la Patch Adams was something I avoided like the plague.  I only saw, at best, half his movies.  The first movie I saw with the woman who became my wife was Good Will Hunting, which I watched hung-over the day after my brother’s bachelor party.  His best, I thought, were the ones made when he flirted with a darker tone to his characterizations – One Hour Video and  Insomnia.

Suffice it to say, though, that I am greatly saddened at his suicide from / by depression.  Though I can’t imagine the demons he faced, I have been there, in my own small way.  You question the meaning of your life, the meaning of any life, and come up empty.  You reject yourself.  You can’t stop that sinister voice inside your head, the voice that simultaneously is and is not you.  You find yourself unmoored on shifting sands as the pressures – financial, health, relationship, career, and a myriad of others – build and build and build and build.  You seek relief through escape, through over-indulgence.  You cannot see the way out.

There is a way, I think, and that is to focus outward.  I have heard it stated that depression is anger expressed inwardly, and I agree completely with that.  But what to focus on?  There is only one thing, and you know Who He is.  That’s the solution, and that’s what I work on, with varying degrees of success, every day, day after day, two steps forward, one step back.

Robin Williams seemingly had everything anyone could want: success, money, fans, fame.  But we all know the pitfalls they all bring, time and time again, all the horror stories that every generation of actors and comedians and writers and anyone with a creative bone in his body fall prey to.  Drugs, alcohol, infidelity, and hundreds of other temptations.  Throw depression into the mix and it is a wonder Mr. Williams lived as long as he did.

He is in my prayers.  Rest in peace.