As I am sitting here unable to stop crying because of this lost to the world, a lost of a person who made people laugh for a living, he was one of those actors who truly touched people's lives with his gift and yet he was so sad inside.
I keep wondering what he must have felt, how much pain he must have been in, so much pain that he figured it was better to inflict more pain to himself so that it will all end.
A lot of people say that taking your life is a sign of cowardice and at some point in my life I thought so too, but when you really think about it, you realize that no one likes to be in pain and those who have attempted suicide or have actually succeeded at taking their lives must have been in so much pain at the moment that they found the courage to hurt themselves just so that their pain would end. They must have felt like they were being tortured and they just wanted it to end.
Most people will never understand that pain unless they have been through it, most think that you have to endure life and keep fighting, keep going, that you have to be brave and overcome whatever it is that is troubling you because someone somewhere has it worse than you. But to you that does not matter, because maybe those that have it worse than you actually were born with the ability to endure and deal with the things that happened to them in a different way than you and therefore those worse things do not affect them the same way they would affect others.
Today though the most prominent thing that came to my mind as I was reading my news feeds was that at the end of your life, once you are gone, everyone will remember how you made them feel, the smiles you brought to them, the laughter, your kindness. I kept reading posts from people who have met Robin Williams personally and people who, like me, were touched by his art, his gift, and not one of them mentioned anything other than the feeling they had by being around him. We live in a world where we put so much emphasis into obtaining things, into how much money we are going to make, into worrying about how much debt we have to pay, how nice the car we drive has to be, the title on the door of our office, trying to obtain an office and we rush through life giving all of this so much importance when in the end none of that is really relevant. People today did not count how many cars Robin had, they did not quote how much money he made, they did not point out how many houses he had or how much each one was worth, they all focused on the times that they spent with him, the times they laughed and cried while watching one of his performances. The world we live in has made us to believe that the things that really don't matter should be the ones we focus more on, should be the ones we give more importance to, and in our constant battle to get those things we lose the connections to the people we are around and when we lose those connections we start to believe that we are all alone and when we feel alone and give into loneliness we invite depression to set in. When we invite depression to come into our lives we start to give it power and we let it over take our life and fill our life with more pain than we can handle.
When we allow ourselves to focus on all the wrong things we forget that there are others who need us, we forget that just helping out someone else, even if it is just listening to them for a bit, can give us a bit of hope and can spark a light in us that we can't get from things.
Think about this for one minute, what are you mostly struggling for? What is it that is making you unhappy? and then think about whether that will matter when you are dead. Think about those who bring a smile to your face when you think about them, take a moment and thank them for being there, take a moment to let them know that you are there if they ever need to talk. Take a break from your crappy job and spend time with the ones you love. Make that phone call, send that text. Connect to the world! If we truly want less people to hurt themselves then we need to start getting connected to the world again, not just through a screen, because through a screen your emoji will never be able to show exactly how you feel. Go out there, hear the voice of the ones you love, some might be thinking that they are alone right now and that they've been forgotten and they might be opening the door for depression to come in and with your call you might make them feel better.
How about we don't just start talking about depression and what it is and how we need to talk about at the moment we feel like we can't handle the pain anymore, how about we talk about how we can prevent getting to that point. How about we open up and we talk about how we feel to those we love, how about we also start listening to those we love when they start talking. Let's prevent people from getting so far into a dark cave that they stop seeing the light that shows the way out. Let's not just talk about it, let us take action on it.
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