You'd think we'd get used to it, or at least get used to expecting it. We never do. I don't care how Zen you pretend to be. We ignore subtle changes, the slowly creeping lines across our own faces, grass straining to grow tall enough to reach the sun - things like that - until one day we take time to notice and, "Holy shit! Where did those wrinkles come from?! And when?!" Or, "I swear I just mowed that lawn. I guess it has been a couple of weeks..."
What I'm really talking about is bigger, more sudden change. The stuff that comes with no warning, flying straight at our foreheads from a clear blue sky. There is not enough Zen in the Universe to hold that shit at bay. All we can do is acknowledge whatever it is and try to live our own truth in the midst of it.
This is why I am writing about the death of Robin Williams when I swore to myself I wouldn't. The fact is, I feel like I've lost a nearly life-long friend, a friendship that began in 1978 when that crazy alien burst into view on the TV Series Happy Days (Mork & Mindy was a spin-off).
Here's the thing. I understand suicide. I understand it, but I don't like it - understanding doesn't necessarily make me a proponent, y'know? I know what huge physical hurt feels like and I understand completely why some people would do anything and everything, even that ultimate thing, to end that pain. I've endured some pretty hefty emotional pain too, so I can only imagine what a tremendous weight of that kind of pain it takes for someone to want that pain to end at any cost. I can only imagine. Thankfully, that's all I can do, but I do understand wanting it to stop, just once and for all... fucking stop.
This isn't a post about addictions and mental illnesses and suicide prevention. This is, simply, about change. Some of us have the ability to change, some of us don't. Some things we can change about ourselves very easily, some things, oh boy... no so much. Sometimes we fight hard to make changes within ourselves and sometimes that change even takes hold... until some inner truth or some old wound or some ancient desire trips us up and sends us headlong into the pavement. And sometimes some stuff just stays stuck no matter what we try. Sometimes that fight for change becomes exhausting.
So. Change. Or don't change. You are human, and in that humanity you are allowed to be all the you that there is.
That brings me to my favorite Robin Williams movie. Sure, I like a lot of them. Scratch that, pretty much all of them. Who can deny the power of Dead Poet's Society, or Good Morning Vietnam, or (this one always gives me goosebumps), The Fisher King? But the one that really struck me is a little known movie called House of D. I stumbled upon it a few years back in video form (yes, video... remember those?) and my interest was piqued not so much because of Williams, but because it was written and directed by David Duchovny. My curiosity drove me to see just what kind of chops Mr. X-Files possessed. Turns out his chops are pretty damned tasty.
I was more than pleasantly surprised by a lovely film about a teenage boy, Tom Warshaw (played to perfection by a young Anton Yelchin) who comes of age surrounded by a rather peculiar group of dysfunctional friends. One of those friends is a woman who yells dating advice to him from the window of the Women's House of Detention. Another friend is sweet, loving, mentally challenged Pappass, played with beautiful understatement by Robin Williams.
This is where I leave you with the quote that, for me, sums up not just this post, but how we approach change... and how I'll approach the change of a world bereft of my on-stage friend, Mr. Williams.
Pappass: I'm not retarded anymore.
Tom Warshaw: Oh really?
Pappass: Really.
Tom Warshaw: When did that happen?
Pappass: 1984. Sometime in the spring. I went from retard to mentally handicapped. And then in 1987-88, I went from handicapped to challenged. I changed again. I'm probably changing right now. Who knows what I'll be next?
