Mortal Thoughts

My cat is stretched out somewhere, taking a nap.  When I settle down to read this afternoon, she will join me on the arm of the chair and settle down... for a nap.  She is luxurious in her ability to stretch out and luxuriate.  What she has that I don't have is essential in its absence:  she lacks awareness of her mortality.  I admire that.  Whether she is chasing down a catnip mouse or berating me for being gone too long or snacking on her dry food, she is always in the moment.

Our curse is pretty much our awareness of our mortality.  Whether we make good or evil, use or waste it, it shadows us everywhere.

When Robin Williams died, it saddened me and everyone else but Rush Limbaugh, but as people were talking about the cause, it seemed that they missed the point.  We all treasured his sweetness and his insanity, but what we all remembered in his passing was brilliance long past.  From Mork to Good Morning, Vietnam, his energy was palpable.  In later years he had moments of brilliance in smaller roles, like in August Rush (2007).  As we all reminisced, though, we did not come up with anything of late that embodied the great Robin Williams.  It surely must have been hard to be him.

I imagine that both fueled and self-medicated in his younger days, the genius was far more spontaneous, after all he hadn't yet had to strive to outdo himself.  As he fought and won the battle against his addictions, I also imagine he had to learn to not be so spontaneous, to analyze and censor his impulses.  While we were all waiting for another flash of the insane improvisations of the young Robin Williams, he also must have expected no less of himself, and yet knew the older man just wasn't the same person.

When we remember and regret the loss of Robin Williams, we don't think of his role in The Crazy Ones, where he looked like he wanted more than anything to break out and be insane again.  We don't think of those later mediocre comedies where he played a disgruntled dad and recited lines.  We think of him bouncing off the wall with Jonathan Winters; we remember Johnny Carson seeming to have to try to get him off the ceiling so the show could go on, all the while wiping away tears of laughter.  We also remember that he could play someone quirky, odd, imperfect, one of us, only better.

And there we are.  Humanity, mortality, aren't we all trying to be us, only better?  Our goals may be confused, but when we fail it's because we are frustrated that we can't do better.  We do crazy things trying to reach that end, everyone from the evil head of ISIS to Robin Williams.  I am in there somewhere and so are you.  Because we are basically all in a race to what turns out to be mortality.

As I wrestle with my mortality and my awareness of same, I think of Neil deGrasse Tyson, who seems to be absolutely tickled to be a teensy tiny part of the amazing universe even for the smallest amount of time.  Then I think, yeah, but he's brilliant and famous and changing the world, and I'm not.  And then I think of my cat, and that maybe I don't have to be remembered when I'm gone.  That maybe I can sometimes just be alive and in the moment and that's good enough.

It's tricky, though.  Robin Williams couldn't do it any longer.  Maybe it will be easier for me because I am smaller.

Another Neil, Neil Diamond, wrote a song about it that was a compilation of famous names and ended,

And each one there

Has one thing shared:

They have sweated beneath the same sun,

Looked up in wonder at the same moon,

And wept when it was all done

For being done, too soon,

For being done too soon.

Robin Williams was born two days after me, on July 21, 1951.