Robin Williams: A Terribly Real Thing in a Terribly False World

“You,” he said, “are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.”

That quote belongs in Emilie Autumn’s psychological thriller novel, “The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls.”

It’s the essence, I think, of Robin Williams. He was so real—so passionate, brilliant, empathetic, brave, and sensitive—letting us see the exquisite beauty that is a byproduct of living with your heart exposed to the world.

That kind of behavior is so rare and so risky.

Because it is so hard to be real today.

In 1959, when Victor Frankl published his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he discussed the research of his one his colleagues, Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. She wrote:

Our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.

She believed that Victor Frankl’s logotherapy—a mental health strategy based on finding one’s life meaning—“may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading.”

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