Robin Williams's death is on the minds of many of us. Not just because his departure is such a huge loss to us and a devastating blow for his family but also because most of us live closer to suicide than we generally admit. Perhaps I am not suicidal but someone I love is or has been. Or perhaps I have been and will therefore always fear, just a little bit, landing again in that dark, immovable place.
The truth is, every day, life is treacherous, and every day it is miraculous. We live constantly between these two breathtaking precipices. If you do not sense this on a fairly regular basis, then you are managing to exist without a certain level of awareness--you are not quite conscious, not really. And I realize that in making this statement I am also making a judgment, something I usually avoid. However, I have been around long enough to know that glossing over dissonance and damage is a greater failure than the occasional lapse into self-righteousness. What I am saying here is that, if you don't understand why a lovely, gifted person would take his own life, there is a whole world of reality with which you are not in touch. There is a shadowy realm of wisdom in which you do not dwell.
We walk and talk and work and breathe within moments of pain and terror. Next door someone is raped or beaten, or in our own home someone falls gravely ill or loses employment. The world is treacherous as long as adults, some of them claiming to be good, religious people, stand at our southern border and scream hatred and rejection at children who arrive already traumatized by lives we cannot imagine. The world is treacherous as long as the Israeli government oppresses and brutalizes an entire people, somehow forgetting how the Jewish people were themselves oppressed and brutalized not that many years ago. And the treachery continues in Palestinian militants who keep performing the same acts of violence, expecting different results--isn't this the definition of insanity? The world is treacherous when we destroy habitats and slaughter thousands and thousands of God's creatures because it makes us a monetary profit. The world is treacherous as long as wealthy and powerful people manipulate the circumstances and outcomes for everyone else while ignoring outright the common good. The world is treacherous as long as women and children are bought and sold, as long as people are tortured, made homeless, and ultimately wiped out because they are the wrong race or religion.
And at every moment we stand at the edge of miracle. We witness wonder every day, even when we are too blind to see it. The world is miraculous because ordinary people go to work every day and do their best and lend a hand and create good things. It's a miraculous place because species adapt to hostile environments and creatures we barely understand allow us to befriend them. The world is miraculous as long as musicians and artists and writers and actors unveil for us the interior soul and its numberless beauties. It is miraculous because scientists and engineers and philanthropists devise the most amazing schemes for improving daily life and helping us thrive in the universe. The world is miraculous because so many people have chosen to spend their lives healing creation and culture and countries. The world is miraculous as long as love endures, truth is spoken, and human life of every sort is valued.
Whether we walk within inches, within moments, of the treacherous or the miraculous, the experience itself requires everything we have. It takes energy to navigate safely in a world where evil is active in so many forms. It also requires great strength of soul to witness wonder and love and respond rightly to them. Existence requires everything from us. Some days we must bear up under pain that is actually unbearable. We must manage hope and strategy when everything falls apart. We must insist on love while withstanding the assaults of its every enemy. And when the day is gentle and we know we are loved--even then, the only true response is to love, and love--true love--expends tremendous power and purpose. Love costs us. Love demands action and awareness and vulnerability and, most of all, perseverance.
Life is not for the faint of heart or the shallow of soul. If you are awake at all, on many days you will feel the great weight of mere existence. You will be overwhelmed just to be here. You will find it quite difficult to bear the acute joy or the severe despair. Of course joy and despair are not the same. But they both make demands. Both sink into us deeply some days. And whether you are giddy with happiness or dizzy with fear, the impact can be a lot to take.
So is it any wonder that sometimes a person standing on the precipice leans too far and tumbles into the void? I think it's entirely possible for a mentally healthy person to slip off the edge if the circumstances on a particular day and hour converge just so. Add to that debilitating depression or the crazy imbalance of addiction or the hopelessness of a wasting disease . . .
What can we do? Hold on to one another. Speak up. Listen. Receive whatever love is there. This life is too stunning to bear alone.
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