Remembering Robin Williams (Lifehacking at 50+)

Okay so I was all set to post some lame-o August blog entry on Living In Small Spaces or How Much a Dog Actually Costs or something all helpful when Robin Williams died.
Damn.
Set me back a good ten days.
Yeah I’d heard that he had bouts with depression, but with his huge heart and his sense of humor and all that he had to live for – if he couldn’t do it, what hope do I have?
Stars die all the time (the old saw that these deaths come in threes is a bunch of crap; they occur on an ongoing basis and you can divide them up into threes if you want, but more will happen the next day, and the next). But this time, I actually sat down and cried.
Because right now the world needs Robin Williamses. There’s so much sadness and hate and brutality and downright meanness that we really need people like him. These are caring people, people who have good enough heads on their shoulders that they raise good kids, people who can look at the foibles of the human race and find the humor (or at least the irony) in them instead of using them as wedge issues to foment hate.
I always hoped I’d have the opportunity to thank him in person for the hours and hours of laughter and happiness, and the reflections on humanity that inevitably followed. Instead I am left with going all nihilistic and this “why bother to do anything, the world is crap” feeling.
The world let him down. He must have felt so alone.
What hope do I, who have a normal brain, and have to work for a day and a half to write a joke and then it’s not even particularly funny, and have to remind myself each morning to not be so stingy because everyone’s struggling, and have to deal with two unruly dogs because kids weren’t in my game plan – what hope do I have for leading any kind of life of hope and love and peace, and beauty and laughter?
Who will be our Robin Williams now?