Those of you who have taken the couplet-ed stroll through one of my New Year’s poems, may hold the notion that I have a morbid fascination with death…quite the contrary. I’m obsessed with life. Of late, I’ve become equally intrigued by the often polar distance between the effect a person may have on others, whose lives they influence, as opposed to the life they actually live. We all make our journey from birth to death with various familial, friendly and assorted miscellaneous companions, yet, the reality of that voyage is an internalized, lonely and personally unique experience. The rolls we play and the masks we wear just to find a semblance of equilibrium, too often abrades our understanding of self worth and purpose, the conflicting emotional struggles giving way to an ever-growing list of neuroses. Not to say that a closer alignment of one’s private and public self is somehow more beneficial than the universally schizophrenic norm, but feeding more than one personality is unnecessarily exhausting. Add the list of identifiable physiological and chemical anomalies to the above and the prognosis is diagnostically depressing.

Cherish the light and the love and the laughter!

Robin McLaurin Williams

1951-2014