I’m missing Robin Williams today. We all are here at Plugged In. We’ve talked of little else this morning. Odd, in a way, since none of us have ever met him personally. Not odd, though, since all of us have “interacted” with him in countless movies and TV shows and news interviews. You see a soul on the big screen often enough, and you develop a sort of one-way bond with him. You can laugh that off if want—and Robin himself might have, with a caustic crack or a witty joke—but it’s still true.
We truly do learn to care about those we “associate” with in the entertainment we watch. It’s one of the reasons Plugged In exists in the first place. We know how powerful those influences and bonds can become.
So it makes sense that Robin’s passing yesterday, a passing already said to have been caused by his own hand, affects us. It makes us grieve. As Simon Jenkins already wrote for The Guardian, “The sadness of the clown is an old show business irony. The death of the clown is even sadder. But Robin Williams was no ordinary clown, he was a clown in the round, a master of the one-liner, of verbal riff, mimicry, disguise, facial distortion, fury and hilarity. He made them laugh and he made them cry. He had the gift of enhancing the lives of others, yet he could not handle one person’s life, his own.”
He continues, “All illness is a great leveler, but none levels like mental illness. … Addictive and depressive illness seems to probe deep into the relations between individuals and those around them. It is the crack in the window that can seem beyond mending. The sadness of the clown goes beyond irony. It is one of the great mysteries of life.”
It’s in times like these, though, when we hear news like this, that we need to force ourselves again to shift our thoughts to not just the mysteries and ironies of life, but the deep dignity and worth of every life, no matter how deep the struggle is. Christians have both the hope of heaven and the encouraging presence of God in our lives here on earth to … well, let’s face it, sometimes just barely muddle through. The grand goal is victorious living, of course, and all the self-help books try to push us there. But we all know it’s hard sometimes. It’s really hard.
Jesus said he came to give us life, and to give it to us in a way that we can live it fully, abundantly. And that promise is sustaining. It gives us hope. But even though we all know it’s sometimes a faraway goal more than a present reality, I wish Robin had felt it more.
Recent Comments