The first thing that comes to mind when you think about Robin Williams is his iconic smile. His contagious and friendly smile is truly unmistakable, and the reason behind that is because he smiles with his entire face.

It’s easy to guess that he was a genuinely kind guy, his smile makes you feel safe despite the deep sadness none of us would've guessed that he felt. Maybe he always meant it when he smiled, even for that small nano-second.

Now, I’m not going to lecture you about the benefits of smiling or its effects on longevity. I'm not going to recite stats about how smiles can reduce stress and earn success, that they build attraction and open interaction… I don’t know these things for sure, at least I can’t measure them.

But here’s what I know,

I know that if you were to rewind back to the happiest moments of your life, then you’d probably be smiling there. Whether you’re holding your baby in your arms, or playing spontaneously when you were a kid, or even the romantic memories with your girl or guy as you lay in bed all afternoon.

Whatever the memory is, I promise you that you would be smiling.

That's one of the reasons I wanted to render a tribute to one of the most contagious smiles in Hollywood, the late great actor Robin Williams. And in doing so I would like to highlight his legacy, the best lesson he said that he learned in his life.

A small lesson he learned from his childhood idol, and later close friend (dreams come true guys!) the also late great comedian, Jonathan Winters.

The World is Open for Play

Humanity's laws and our shared reality are made up of permutable and ever-changing elements and social structures that are translated into rigid rules and pressures that more often than not, tend to limit the way we live our lives. What is seen as savage and barbaric today, was perceived as totally reasonable not too long ago.

Rules are funny that way.

Sometimes it seems that we are not so different than fish who don't realize that they live in water.

The role of the comedians on many occasions tends to gravitate towards making fun of these made up rules and those rigid structures, that otherwise would've gone unquestioned except from a few brave souls who were destined with total certainty to a life sentence of social ostracism for daring to question the rules.

The Song Remains the Same

If you’ve ever read Plato’s work The Republic then you've probably realized that every generation in human history is bound to recreate some version of the metaphorical cave. And every version is bound to have a part of the population escaping the cave and hoping that other people would too question if those fears that were passed on to them were true or fabled, and maybe realize that those shackles were in fact imaginary.

Take for example, the veil. Millions of women around the world wear that thing around their heads, and if a single hair was to slip up, then they would quickly shove that thing back inside before some snooping angel catches her with her hair out and snitches to God.

This is not only in the middle east by the way, you can find the same phenomena in some parts of eastern Europe and Central Africa.

Fear of eternal damnation, one of the most popular caves in human history. Millions upon millions of souls have resided there for one period of time or another.

But let's take that veil story, it's obvious that not all the women in those countries share that precise fear, at least not really. Many of them in fact are constantly wishing to be free from those stupid made up rules that they didn’t chose, and that were just passed on to them by accident of birth as some sort of cruel joke.

But what happens is that they keep their thoughts to themselves for fear of social pressure.

And there's of course another type of women that even though they may never have entertained that thought, they wouldn't mind an option B. If they were offered a new perspective for example, then they would probably go: Huh, I never thought about it that way, but now that you say that... Wait a minute, wait a minute!

That’s when the role of the comedians comes in, to relieve the social pressure and to throw in the idea that maybe, just maybe those fears were fabled as usual, and that those shackles were fucking imaginary.

The way to do that, the only way to do that is by making people laugh at things they were afraid to even doubt. As the aforementioned comedian Bill Hicks once said:

"The best kind of comedy to me is when you make people laugh at things they've never laughed at. And also to shine a light into the darkened corners of people's minds, exposing them to the light.

Which in this particular case it would be something like this:

If the veil was made popular in the 1980’s, and presumably the last time God spoke was centuries ago, then how did the supreme leaders receive the newly updated memo that hair was now to be made public enemy number 1? Wait a minute, waaait a minute!

Now that's what you call bringing sexy back.

No offense to any religious person that I may have offended here, but guys, this planet has had over nine thousands polytheistic religions, and these just the ones we know of. How many of them are left now?

All of them disappeared as a consequence of people realizing that their shackles may just have been imaginary. It’s what in psychology is called “Dance of the Sociopath” when people suddenly wake up one day and realize: What, how could we ever fall for this shit?

And this is not exclusive to religions by the way, in fact most religious people are decent people just like everybody else, this dance stands for many other aspects of life, it has to do with fear.

For instance, there are many people who are atheists but still fear demons nerveless. But if someone were to make them laugh about it, asking them how come they don’t fear the Japenese Rugrau, the Wendingo, or even a fucking chupacabra. They would've probably laughed about it.

That small act of questioning, may help people wonder if the fact of growing up with a certain fear is enough to legitimize its existence and cripple their lifestyle.

"You figure it's all a scam, huh? All them folks? They just wrong?

Oh yeah! Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, "He said for you to give me your fucking share." People... so god damn frail they'd rather put a coin in the wishing well than buy dinner."

― The Locked Room ; True Detective

That’s the true legacy of comedians, that the world is open for play. That everything is up for grabs, that smiles make the world go around and that fear shouldn’t have to be an instructions manual. But instead that maybe we should take those fears and re-arrange them into hilarious parodies.

"Jonathan taught me that the world is open for play, that anything and everybody is mockable in a wonderful way!" ― Robin Williams