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Remembering Robin Williams: 5 Life-Lessons for YOU

Remembering Robin Williams: 5 Life-Lessons for YOU

Last updated on: April 24, 2017 at 1:16 pm by kathleenokeefe

Remembering Robin Williams: 5 Life-Lessons for YOU 2017-04-24T13:16:47-06:00 kathleenokeefe

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“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”~ Robin Williams

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It has been observed in May in the United States since 1949, reaching millions of people through the media, local events, and screenings. This May we remember Robin.

Award-winning actor Robin Williams was found dead in his northern California home on August 11, 2014. Williams committed suicide at his home in Paradise Cay, California at the age of 63. The initial report released on August 12, by the Marin County Sheriff’s Office deputy coroner stated Williams had hanged himself with a belt and died from asphyxiation. Robin made his living by making us laugh. But while he was laughing on the outside with us, he was crying on the inside alone and extremely depressed.

The death of an icon can strike us with fear. If they could not survive life how can we? What is our lifeline during these turbulent times on the Sea of Life? This article provides you with five answers.

Imagination is a double-edged sword. It can help us escape reality to the point of getting lost. Like a child playing in the woods, we become distracted by our created fantasy and lose track of time and space. Suddenly we are deep in the forest.

How can you find your way when you cannot see the path through the past?

We all need a life-line to grab onto when we realize we are lost in life.

A Life-line will not keep you from getting lost in fantasy, pain or depression, but it will guide you through your darkest hours of doubt when the unknown of death appears more inviting than the known life being lived.

After all, life is a journey. You seldom know where you are going or how you will get there until you start to look back at where you have been and how far you have traveled. For some of us much of the way may feel uphill. The silver lining to that dark cloud is that eventually, the path will lead downhill. What goes up must come down; the Law of Gravity and life on earth.

Just as cave divers use lifelines of fishing filament to find their way out of dark holes and back to safety, our relationships can be our lifelines back to reality.

Here are 5 lifelines called the 5 Fs that may help you.

Faith- what is your belief system? Remember it. Re-embrace it.
Face your challenges. Don’t run from them. They will follow you.
Focus on the silver lining in the dark cloud. It will help you see out.
Family-reach out.
Friends- reconnect

Alone, these lifelines can guide you out of the darkness of the moment. When tied together, they become a strong rope that can pull you to safety.

Grief is a painful form of love, and pain is reality. To be in pain is human. To suffer is a choice. Anything that deadens pain becomes a pleasure.

Pain-killing pharmaceuticals deaden physical pain. Role playing is a psychological treatment that can control or deaden emotional pain. When used to excess, either can become addicting. When combined to excess, the double edged sword of imagine becomes a guillotine.

The unrealistic excitement of controlling our world from behind the safe and predictable mask of Pretend-Land can make returning to reality and unscripted challenges an almost impossible fearful, painful, feat.

Rather than facing reality we may prefer to stay in the safety of our waking lucid dream-world of role-playing where we know we are dreaming but think that we can change the endings and temporarily control the nightmare.

The optimum word here is temporarily. Reality always wins over fantasy.

The dream becomes reality and reality becomes the nightmare. Like anything else in life, a perfect dream-state can become addicting.

Was Robin William’s death his desperate attempt at a final awakening?

Sweet dreams Robin Williams. We show our love for you with grief that embraces memories that make us smile, again. “Nanu, Nanu!” as his alien character Mork would say. May you rest in peace in the angelic arms of your fellow comedians, Richard Jeni, Chris Farley, and John Belushi, the man you called your “wake-up call.”

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BIO: Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos believes dreams can diagnose your life. Did you have a déjà- vu or did your dream come true? Kat survived three cancers diagnosed by her dreams. Author, inspirational speaker, radio-host, columnist, Cancer Hotline Counselor; she has been featured on Dr. Oz, radio and TV, in magazines and newspapers, SURVIVING CANCERLAND: Intuitive Aspects of Healing is an International Bestseller and the first in her three book series. Kat taught Special Education and Psychology at (USF) University of South Florida. www.AccessYourInnerGuide.com www.KathleenOkeefeKanavos.com

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