"I don't want to live in a world where Robin Williams commits suicide." That's a quote from Reddit user filmfiend999. At first glance, it's quite fitting. But I think there's more to it.
Most of my life consists of me lost in my own head, wondering about the many things I cannot control. These things have the ability to take over a mind and tear you up inside.
Nihilism is a strange concept to many – unbelievable to many, too. But there are times it makes sense. Perfect sense. How can a child, so innocent and pure, have cancer ravage its tiny body? How can an entire nation starve when just an ocean away we binge eat on pizza and cheeseburgers? How can a man, so humble and giving, so spectacularly funny and talented, be in so much pain? The hardest part for any of us is simply picturing him so very sad that this was the answer. What a horrid image.
"There's a plan for everything."
No there's not. A plan is an attempted execution of events, sequenced to accomplish a final task or goal. A plan makes sense in context and works towards the completion of something in accordance. A plan (not a sane one, at least) is not an amalgamation of things, packed together by large hands creating a meatball of shit, in order to accomplish the ultimate goal. Which is what, in this case? The self-imposed death of a genius?
There is no plan. There is no ultimate goal, aside from what is the direct result. You eat, you get full. You cut yourself, you bleed. You live, you die. Things happen because they do, because that's life. And life is not a test. Life is not a prerequisite. Robin Williams didn't kill himself because nature decided to make him an example for the many lives he might have saved yesterday, to be anointed a saint (or, conversely, to burn in hell). That was simply the result, not the reason. The reason was because the human brain isn't perfect. For all the marvel and all the wonder, it's still broken in the vast majority of people – myself included. It just so happens that all some people need are an oil change or a tune-up, where someone like Robin Williams or Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Kurt Cobain or the kid my wife went to high school with were irrevocably damaged – head on collisions with a force to strong they couldn't help but drive into it.
It's easy to take from that the misery and disgust many have. It's easy to take a look at it and think, well, there is no real purpose. But that, in itself, might just be the real purpose. You live life to live life. And while I find myself, a person with two children and a pretty goddamn good life, asking what the purpose is quite often, I come up with this answer most of the time.
We all live the same life. We're born, we try our best to survive (and most of us to survive with the same purpose – just because the ideals are different doesn't mean the intentions are) and we die. Everything in between is luck of the draw, and what we do with it is of our own accord. Robin Williams, as tormented and demonized as he seemed to be, took his talent and humility and made the world a slightly better place for many, and a much better place for some. But he did. And when you can still live life accordingly, with love and generosity, knowing that at the end of the day everything you touch with be gone, leaving only those who remember your stories to be your advocates, you're a special person. Maybe that's what separates someone from the rest.
So while I don't want to live in a world where Robin Williams kills himself, I do want to live in a world where Robin Williams lived.
"When in doubt, go for the dick joke." - Robin Williams.