The Laughter Will Live On, But...

It’s been a few days, but I think I finally know how I want to talk about this. I’ve tried a couple of times to get my thoughts together on paper, but threw the results away as self-indulgent nonsense. This attempt may be too, but I think I’ve finally processed my thoughts and feelings enough to say my piece.

I think I finally understand where the myths of gods and saints and heros come from, and why we’re so inclined to build myths around certain individuals. The world has recently lost a series of men who, to me, seemed so much bigger than regular people. These were men that I came to think of more as embodiments of what they do, than I did as fellow human beings. I let my mind turn these people into the physical manifestations of the concepts that they represented to me.

The problem was, of course that they were human, and therefore they were mortal. They died, but the concepts and the ideas that they came to represent to me lived on. And they each, in their own way, made such a big impact on myself and on the world, that part of them seems to have lived on after they left.

When I was having a very hard time, an HBO special helped me to survive. It even helped me to smile, even though I couldn’t find much reason to. I have a DVD of that special that I can watch, and the audio version is stored on my iPod. Any time I’m feeling low, I can watch or listen to that performance, and it will make me feel a little better--so at least in that way, a part of him really does live on. And that’s true of the others, as well.

But to turn these men into heros or gods, however, diminishes what they accomplished. Each, in his own way, was extraordinary, and each deserves to be remembered as human men. Extraordinary men, but men nevertheless.

Goodbye Neil Armstrong, Pete Seeger, and Robbin Williams. The world is a poorer place for having lost you.