I wrote this a few day's after Robin Williams' death and posted it as a Facebook status:
Is Robin William's death any more tragic than that of a combat veteran who decides to put an end to their own pain and suffering? Or a lonely, misfit teen, or a single mother whose struggle to feed her children is just not succeeding? Or anyone? No. Absolutely not. But there is a difference. The difference is how we perceive it when someone appears to "have it made" or "have it all". Loving children, a beautiful wife, millions of adoring fans. Sixty flipping bicycles. Sixty.
It makes it hard to get your head around it. He had what most of us spend 60 or 80 hours a week chasing. But in the end, none of that was what mattered. It's easy for us to rationalize the depression when the sufferer has been through the sort of hell that most of us can barely even imagine, but the guy who "has it all?" Not so easy.
The other difference was that we saw Robin as a part of our lives. From "Nanu Nanu" to "I gotta go see about a girl" to "Carpe Diem" to "Gooooooood Morning Vietnam!" we all felt like we knew him, like he was a friend. I'd always thought that in those moments between the jokes, fleeting and quick as a wink, that there was a sadness in his eyes, but it always disappeared as soon as the next joke started.
None of us saw this coming. Depression is a disease that is easy to mistake for an attitude problem or a wrong outlook on life. It's a disease that requires constant treatment. Sometimes that is in the form of anti-depressant drugs and sometimes the treatment is a daily maintenance of your own psychological well being, but if you have it and don't stay a step ahead of it, it will get you.
RIP Robin.
Since then my wife and I have watched Dead Poets society a couple of times. Actually, I have watched it a couple times; she has watched it a lot more than that, and we are finding in it some inspiration that we were missing. We are looking for ways to bring creativity into our lives and challenge ourselves to step outside of the everyday routine. We're stepping up the "daily maintenance" and to that end, I'm starting this blog. Expect to read about cycling, technology, adventures in fermentation, rationalism and perhaps some politics and about life in general. Feel free to challenge what I have to say, and I'll try to listen.
I walked out to the garden this morning and was accompanied by dark thoughts about how easy it would be to surrender to the nagging aches and pains that push me away from getting on my bike and riding. I see people all around me leading apparently normal lives while letting their bodies go. But I have been there before. I've been sixty plus pounds overweight and miserable. I cannot say what is going on in the lives of others, but I was miserable. I was leading a life like those that Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation." I have never felt worse than I did carrying around all that bulk and I never want to go there again, so I'll suit up in lycra (or spandex as my older brother likes to call it when he's trying to get my goat) and get on the bike and churn out thirty or so miles this afternoon and maybe I'll set some PR's on Strava segments, who knows? I'll record the data and compare it to how I've been doing and I'll feel a little better about myself after.
