Robin Williams, Identity, and the Fate of the Earth
12 years ago | Posted in:
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Robin Williams is dead. He finally surrendered to standard psychiatry and they were eager to do their thing on him too, lord knows.
His problem was a thing called “schizoid personality disorder”. He undoubtedly read the hipper books regarding the supreme spiritual problem of our times… and saw clearly that he was an example of what was being described in many of these books…the way they describe our disconnection with the STUFF of our lives, the feeling of being separate from all that but not sure who we are separated from all that.
He always used our essential fragmentation of personality, as a tool 4 comedy….played with his self as such, and used the fragmented nature of his inner being, as a vehicle for his comedy..the rapid-fire succession of characters with such dead-on accuracy of mimicking, that it left one breathless.
And did it so brilliantly, such that no one saw the inner Robin, the lost one. And because of that feeling of being lost, of literally being NO ONE, he turned to self medication, and then when that didn’t help, to standard psychiatry.
The rest is history.
He never had anyone like a compassionate modern super hip shrink who GOT it too, and could nevertheless, help him feel better, less lost & frightened.
Women he loved because he knew they loved him and secretly he longed for the healing to come from them. But even that failed.
This is the overarching DIS-EASE of our times. It is behind what has broken down our entire society. This concept of no center, no essential personal nature underneath all the flying fragments of our usually pointless separate existences.
Most of us are perfectly able to admit to the essential pointlessness of what the larger world seems to be “doing”.
And I say their perception is correct.
My point is that this one gifted and off-the-charts bright fellow sufferer, our Robin Goodfellow….could feel everything so much more intensely, because his cognition never ever got in the way. He was just too bright. And he was so good as just being a PERSON, that the pain must have been utterly baffling much of the time, as it was the same time perfectly understandable why nobody else could perceive it and relate to him enough to relieve the terror and isolation and lostness. Although we all feel it, for most of us its easier to hide behind other more understandable problems..like personal insufficiency.
His spirit was telling us that we will never be responsible for our own suffering. Is isn’t our fault we suffer.
But then there is another toxic layer..the need to feel responsible thereby take the suffering into oneself and always feel inadequate so that we have some control as it were…over the pain. It doesn’t work obviously, but that really is the essence of what has happened to this country (my USA) and what seems to be happening to the world…..just as one example of how all this ties in to everything else that we need to notice.
Maybe now that this lovely astonishing gentleman actor is dead we can have the courage to look a little deeper inside and notice what connects us all, and see that if we realize our fears and lostness are not really ours alone, then maybe we can give ourselves the right to have more compassion for other kinds of human weaknesses, and then maybe have a bit more left over for a world desperately in need of compassion and healing.
Through my grief for this irreplaceable departed friend I try hard to remember that.
Contributed by: Marrow
Bio: Marrow is freelance article writer and peace activist based in USA
Tags: article, Fate of Earth, identity, opinion, Robin Williams
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