RIP Robin Williams

[Mike]

Can't believe another comedy great is gone.

I grew up watching him on TV as Mork from Ork and it's so sad to see him gone and to realize we will never be blessed with his unique form of comedy ever again.

So hard to understand how a person like him could not find anything worth living for anymore.

No matter how bad things get, you'd think instead of ending it all you could just take a less drastic alternative. Just drop out of public life, grow a beard and long hair and drive around the country in a beat up VW for awhile, he had the resources to do anything, buy an island go hang out there, just figure out what makes you happy and do it. Millions of people loved and admired him. Hard to imagine getting to a place where there is so little joy left that ending it all seems like the only thing left to do.

 

[iamrushman]

sad news........

 

[mdb]

Deep depression. A very gifted man gone too soon @ 63.

Here in the SF Bay Area he was much respected as a modest and humble man.

 

[Steve_C]

Very sad. He had a long history of drug and alcohol problems with another recent trip to rehab. That does not help.

 

[boulderjohn]

It is hard for those of us who do not suffer from something like depression how debilitating it can be. I am sure that much of his trouble with drugs and alcohol were the simply his unofficial way of medicating himself from those symptoms.

In graduate school I majored in English literature. In my studies I was struck by the number of great writers who were also victims of some kind of mental illness of this sort. I even wrote a poem about it, wondering in it if they would trade all their great fame for the kind of life that the rest of us nobodies lead. I am for some reason seeing a parallel between Williams and Virginia Woolf, who suffered through bouts of manic depression in her younger days, had about 25-30 good, productive years, and then killed herself at age 59 when she felt her earlier illness returning and decided that death was better than going through all that again.

 

[BRT]

Can't believe another comedy great is gone.

I grew up watching him on TV as Mork from Ork and it's so sad to see him gone and to realize we will never be blessed with his unique form of comedy ever again.

So hard to understand how a person like him could not find anything worth living for anymore.

No matter how bad things get, you'd think instead of ending it all you could just take a less drastic alternative. Just drop out of public life, grow a beard and long hair and drive around the country in a beat up VW for awhile, he had the resources to do anything, buy an island go hang out there, just figure out what makes you happy and do it. Millions of people loved and admired him. Hard to imagine getting to a place where there is so little joy left that ending it all seems like the only thing left to do.

Finding what makes you happy is the trick. And nothing on this earth does that long term.

 

[tomfcrist]

Ultimate act of cowardice. A permanent solution to temporary problems. I feel bad for his family, but really wish folks would quit sensationalizing him.

 

[boulderjohn]

Ultimate act of cowardice. A permanent solution to temporary problems. I feel bad for his family, but really wish folks would quit sensationalizing him.

Suicide can indeed be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it is often not that simple. For example, read the section of this Hemingway biography about his death, and the inherited disease that caused his mental abilities to to deteriorate badly. His father, brother, and sister all committed suicide, all probably with the same disease.

In Williams' case, he really didn't have obvious problems with his life that needed a temporary solution. He had just finished a very productive and profitable work period, and things were looking good for the future. The exception was his growing depression. People with severe depression or other disorders do not come to rational decisions about their lives. Cowardice is the decision of a rational mind. Someone who is not capable of thinking clearly cannot be blamed for poor thinking any more than a person with a broken leg can be blamed for poor walking.

 

[tomfcrist]

We disagree....wholeheartedly.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

...Cowardice is the decision of a rational mind. Someone who is not capable of thinking clearly cannot be blamed for poor thinking any more than a person with a broken leg can be blamed for poor walking.

Well said.

Deep depression and its causes are often not "rational"; most of us are dumb-struck by the fact that someone who seemed to have achieved so much could still be depressed enough to be suicidal. Yet he was.

The thought processes and actions of those who have reached that level of depression and despair cannot be judged in a rational light. Their thought processes and reasoning have "jumped the rails".

Best wishes.