Last week was a big one in celebrity deaths. Bowie and Alan Rickman being the most discussed.
It's nothing new that people in their thousands take to the internet to show their appreciation and fondness of the famous faces that pass away.
For me I only recently experienced truly being affected by this, being younger most of my heroes are still doing pretty good thankfully but when we lost Robin Williams it did move me. He was a huge part of my childhood and it was very strange to feel loss over someone I'd never met. The same thing happened last week with Alan Rickman and to an extent David Bowie (Labyrinth is easily in my top favourite films of all time!).
But what makes us feel so intensely about these individuals, almost as if they were family?
Well for one they have played a part in our lives even if we haven't in theirs, through film, music and TV. People can be moved by characters they connect with, story lines that relate to them and often just pure talent. When we lose these it can hit hard.
I also think sympathy gets involved, we think about how their friends and family are feeling and how we'd handle losing someone close to us.
Finally it forces us to consider our own mortality especially if these celebs are close to our own age. No one enjoys thinking about the finite time we have so the emotions flow freely when the thought enters our mind. It makes us wonder about our future, what we have done and will do with our lives. Have we done all we wanted? Are we satisfied with our accomplishments? Often sadly the answer is "not yet" and the idea of death wakes us up to that fact that we have limited time to do all the things we want and that's hard to take in and can be upsetting. But truth is we can do these things and a lot of the time it's only us that's stopping ourselves.
This topic always brings up a bit of controversy and many people have opinions on what is an acceptable way to react and this comes down to the fact that everyone grieves and is effected by death in completely different ways.
With the use of social media and the internet allowing us to share our every thought and feeling a lot of people will open up about how big events change them. This opportunity to share can also lead to judgment and negativity. Many will judge anyone that acts in a way that is different to them and now they have the ability to tell that person they're wrong. Which is bullshit.
To whatever extent you choose to show your emotions, it's all good. If you cried on reading that Alan Rickman had passed and chose to post memes or photos to show your appreciation and heartbreak or if you felt nothing and don't really understand why others have reacted so violently, it's all good. Differences in opinion is what makes life exciting.... just don't be a dick about it. Have your own and allow other to have theirs. Acceptance doesn't require understanding.
Final thought - cancer is a fucktard, I ran a race for cancer research last year and if you feel like making a difference please visit here and donate if and what you can.
Be awesome to each other.
x
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