Robin Williams has died and the world has gone mad

 

I’m meant to be studying.

As I try to focus on my readings about how language determines thought processes, how most things are a construct, that before the late 1800s there was no categories of a person being either heterosexual or homosexual, it was just deemed that as a person you had the propensity to either like the same sex or the opposite sex, my mind keeps wandering.

I cannot concentrate.

Our world is in crisis.

Last night I walked into the kitchen, “Did you see this?” Mr C asked.

He had paused the TV.  On it was an image of a young boy holding up something quite large that had been blacked out, with something else that had been blacked out at the bottom of the screen.

I looked at my husband confused.

“What you are seeing there is a Facebook status of the father of a 9 year old boy, holding up a cut off head, with the comment below of ‘that’s my boy’, or something to that effect.”

I looked at him, my hand immediately clasping at my mouth.   A little scream escaped.

“It’s not a human head?” I asked, praying like hell it wasn’t.

“It is, Sarah.  Apparently it’s an Iranian’s head.  The boy is Australian.  Apparently, they have fled to Syria.”

Without warning, I just burst into tears.  A gnawing at my gut immediately gripped me and I had to bend over, resting my head on the bread board on my bench.

What the fuck is happening to this world of ours?  What is happening to the media that it feels it is okay to give this evil fanaticism air time?  I had an urge to find out about the story, but resisted it.  I had seen the image, I didn’t need to know the back story.  There was no story that would ever make that okay.  Ever.

All of last night my heart felt sick.  So much war and devastation, so much inhumanity.  Even though it isn’t right on our door step, we get to live it each and every night with images of people being blown out of the sky, and into smithereens, and body bags being chucked about and heads being held up like trophies.  Tears stained my pillow as I fell into a dark slumber.

And then I woke up and Robin Williams had died.  Robin Williams, who had given the world so much joy and laughter, whose wit was uncompromising, whose humanity shone from him like the brightest lighthouse for miles around, whose very existence gave us common folk a reprieve from all that nastiness that we have to endure, had taken his life.  Because, even for him, the world was just too much to bear.

Sadness does not begin to describe how I am feeling right now.  Twitter is agog with the loss of Robin.  If only he had known how very much he was loved.

We need a new direction.  Humanity needs a change.  The definition of humanity needs something new.  We need to let the media know that this is not okay.  That the forms of entertainment and news currently on offer are not acceptable.  Our children do not need to see those images.  They do not need to become desensitised to war and death and evil.  They do not need to see a 9 year old holding up a human head as if that is a perfectly okay image to see.  Oh my god, on so many levels, it is so not okay.

And people who suffer with depression need to be taken seriously, dammit.  People should not be feeling so exasperated with the world that they feel compelled to take their own lives.  Why are we not doing more about this?

Please tell me that you get this.  Please tell me that you see, as I do, there is a mental madness going on in the world and that we need to fight to change it.  Our discourse has to change.  Somewhere, somehow, we need to make this stop.

It’s hard to study today.  It just seems so trivial in a world gone mad.

Until next time,

 

 

If you are feeling overwhelmed and you feel the need to speak to someone, please please call Life Line in your country.  In Australia, the number is 13 11 14.