more normal than not

Robin Williams died while we were on vacation.

What the heck.

Sometimes, you take for granted the people who have been around forever.

It’s been a long time since I first laughed at Mork.

I had a long time to settle into the idea that Robin Williams was going to be around for a while….and I stopped paying close attention to his existence.

What’s strange to me is how many people are using his death to politicize….or philosophize…or even GET ANGRY OVER (with each other, mostly….some funny/strange comments floating around out there) his passing.

Here’s the real issue:  This guy….this funny, manic, driven by “whatever demons birth comedy” guy…this guy who always seemed to be “on”, no matter the situation….had something that made him so sad and hopeless that he ended “being”.

It wasn’t heroic or anything….it was just something that he must have considered for a while….or maybe not, maybe it was just a quick decision, I don’t know….anyway, he ended this part of his life and left behind the people and parts of his life that he loved.

It wasn’t a political statement….

It wasn’t caused by something that should be debated without end….

We can’t sit here….breathing, and for the most part, at least, approaching happiness….and pass judgement on what makes anyone decide that the best option for fixing the problem is to just stop….just stop “being”.

Now, it turns out that he had the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease going on.

Illness isn’t a license to kill yourself…but what is? And who needs a license anyway?

We live…and hope for something good to fill us up a little….get all of us over whatever speed bumps we come up against….give us enough hope to realize that it’s all changing every second…that nothing sad can be completely “forever”.

There’s hope that we ignore when depression fuels our sadness so completely.

Most of the anger that I mentioned earlier doesn’t even seem to be directed Robin Williams’ way.

Most of it seems to be anger over differences we all seem to have over the “spiritual consequences” of suicide…or the political environment and how it contributes to suicide (!)….or any weird personal side issues that can refocus and distract our attention from the sad issue at hand.

I think that sometimes we just like to hear ourselves talk.

Robin Williams was a funny, funny man.

He was sad…probably about a number of things….and the manic desperation….the comedy….the working out the problems using the swirling tornado of thought that seemed to be always with him…was the way of coping with the sadness that we never could look behind.

We couldn’t get beyond who we saw in front of us….making us laugh.

We needed him to be what we thought he was.

I hope he had some people in his life who he didn’t have to be funny with.

 

You know….it’s not the falling down that’s so damaging.

If you’re moving, you’re falling.

We throw ourselves….we catch ourselves….when we’re walking, we’re always falling down.

I think that it’s the “never getting up” part that kills.

Kills.

That’s pretty darn dramatic.

I guess that, as lightly as I’d like to take it all, LIFE is pretty darn dramatic.

Stuff happens.

Stuff happens and we choose to be imagine that we are “damaged” forever….pack it all up in a suitcase with a tow rope and drag it behind us for all perpetuity….or get up and start moving again.

Getting up and staying up is hard.

That’s pretty darn profound.

Ahhhhhh…..we all carry our bindle full of sadness around with us….everybody has something that they carry…some just know seem to figure out how to pack light.

Some don’t hoard that sadness like other people do.

Enough of that “sadness” talk…I’m bringing me down.

I guess that what I’m thinking is that the falling down part is inevitable….we fall down.

I know that….we fall….every one of us.

But it’s the getting up….the getting up part….that’s the mark of a quality fortunate person.

What the heck?….getting up is just a reflex action.

It’s just what we do…(try to do)…we want to get up before anyone else notices that we’ve fallen down.

It’s not some noble pursuit to try and bounce back up.

When you get down to it, I guess that all you can do is what this video suggests….

That’s all you can do….

 

A short PS….8/14.   I wrote a bunch of posts before we went on vacation. This post was one of them. While we were on vacation, Robin Williams committed suicide and then a day later, this scheduled post made its way on to the blog. The bad timing was unintentional and regrettable. I don’t understand getting over depression….sadness can follow you for a long time….retreat and reappear without notice or explanation. It’s not something to take lightly….but I wish that I could….”take it lightly”. Given the timing of the events, this post sounds kind of smug and silly…even (what’s the word when someone is a ‘know-it-all’? Maybe….) arrogant….but that wasn’t the intent. Sometimes, it’s easy to type out something at 5 in the morning that I think no one will read….and say things that aren’t really considered very completely. I do still like the part about “getting up”, though….I know that it’s possible. Things don’t have to follow us forever…there is peace to be found…..I know that. Robin Williams was a manic genius….so quick and so funny. The dark side of “manic” is a hard thing. It’s hard to meet people’s expectations all the time. I will miss him.

 

I know how to fix things a little better now than I did when I was in my 20’s.

When I was in my early 20’s, I had a 1972 Volkswagen Bus that was kind of a piece of….

It had some issues.

One of the issues that it had was the driver.

There were a lot of things that were wrong with that bus that were easy to fix.

There were a lot of problems that I should have known were easy to fix….but at the time, I just let them go and tried to get creative with pieces of wire and rope.

I think that at one point, I had to drive barefoot because the accelerator pedal had come loose from the floor and I had to grip its edge with my toes to get it to move in the right direction.

I might have propped it up with a piece of two by four at some other point.

I’d work at figuring out all sorts of weird “fixes”….everything except fixing it right.

It contributed to the hilarity of driving the bus when the faulty headlight switch went out every bump that we hit driving on curvy mountain roads.

It was hilarious when the accelerator cable came loose again from the attachment to the carburetor at the back of the bus.

It was funny when you had to carry an ice scraper to scrape the inside of the windshield when you drove it on a really cold day….when you had to step out of the bus to warm up.

That was funny.

It was a pain in the rear when things didn’t work right because I didn’t know how to fix it….and was too reluctant to just ask somebody who knew how to repair simple problems.

It’s a character building thing to have something like that to work on.

Now, I know that anything can be fixed.

I know that most things can be made better…that you can get it close to “right” if you figure out how.

Back then, it was all a learning experience.

It takes a long time sometimes to figure things out, though.

Problems build character….or turn you into a character.

That was one funky van.

I kind of miss it….and all its problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SigOSa8j3E0

I spent so much of my life feeling so shy.

I wonder why that was…. now.

It’s not something that everybody would know.

Jenny calls me a showboat…I guess that I got over it.

Jenny was really shy….really shy.

She’s not so shy anymore, either.

I guess that when you get a little more mature and have some commitments and things that occupy your attention, you get over some of that shyness.

But there was something that I carried around for a bunch of years that made me pretty darn shy.

Weird.

Hard to say what it was….but shyness sure gets in your way.

It’s not a good thing to be silenced by shyness.

The only good thing about shyness and sensitivity (etc., etc…..blah, blah, blah) is that it gives you some quiet time to listen to guys like Cat Stevens Yusuf Islam.

You can sure waste a lot of years feeling shy.

Don’t be shy.

 

We had a meltdown in the grocery store last night.

When I say “we”, it’s to protect the guilty.

I don’t have meltdowns in public.

When I do, they’re fantastically passive aggressive and snarky.

I don’t kick and scream…or thrash about.

I don’t do that….I’m a MATURE MAN…I bite my tongue and whisper mean things, instead.

I have ways of melting down that are a lot more covert than the meltdowns that an emotionally honest child has.

Anyway….when Nate and I got out to the car after leaving Jenny and the rest of the children in the store, we sat and tried to cool off a little.

When people hear “YOU’RE DUMB!!!!!! YOU’RE DUMB!!! I DON’T LIKE BEING WITH YOU!!!” coming from the minivan, they stare and smile….and I wave at them as they pass….and then somebody yells some more.

That’s just the way it goes.

Anyway, I turned on the radio and after scrolling through the stations, settled on one of the Christian stations in our area, and….the yelling stopped.

Amazing….who could have seen that coming?

It was like a DEMON had been chased out of the Grand Caravan.

The announcer talked about a lot of things that they talk about on Christian radio….and then from the back seat, I heard a voice, exhausted after a strong bout of yelling at me, say, “presents?”.

“I want presents….”

I realized what had happened, and before I knew what I was doing, said, “No…I think he’s saying ‘presence’….like God’s around, not ‘presents’ “.

Nate didn’t need an explanation….”presents” actually might work better than “presence” anyway.

We hear “presence” all the time…until we stop paying full attention.

Maybe “presents” is a stronger way to present (er….) the situation.

The reason for the meltdown at the beginning of this story was that somebody had such uncontained enthusiasm for being in the grocery store with all these old people who were just dying to break a hip at the hands of an energetic four-year old…I mean literally dying to break a hip when a disciple of the cartoon character Sonic the Hedgehog came ripping down their aisle…..somebody was too energetic and loud …..and we HAD TO GET OUT OF THERE QUICK….take that energy somewhere safe….somewhere containable.

That’s why we left…even though some of the people in our group of two REALLY DIDN’T WANT TO GO…..”LET GO OF ME!!! LET GO OF ME!!!! YOU’RE SQUEEZING ME!!!! LET GO!!!! PUT ME DOWN!!!!! ARGHHHHHH!!!!”

Man…I hate the walk of shame through the gauntlet of disapproving old eyes.

I hate that.

“God’s presents”….man, it’s hard sometimes…but I am so lucky to have a high-spirited little guy like that in my life.

I miss the “presents” part when I start feeling frazzled on the long walk out of a nice grocery store.

It’s easier to shop when no one is thrashing or yelling.

I miss these “presents” all the time….until something makes me catch my breath and say, “oh”.

“oh……would you look at that? God…..that is beautiful…..”

Nate wants some presents.

Me, too….”presents” or “presence”…I’ll take either one….anytime.