I’ve always been a bit uneasy around the great late comedian Robin Williams – even though there was always a screen and hundreds of miles, and sometimes decades of time between me and his real-time presence. I’d flinch a little as his over-the-top antics made my pals grip their stomachs and laugh uproariously. I’d gulp air, and laugh uneasily. His humor, his energy, his desire for your laugh belied a neediness that made me uncomfortable. It was not a conscious thing… it was a needy thing of my own. I think on some level, I wondered if my own creativity could reveal as much of my secret weaknesses as his revealed his. Creativity and depression go hand in hand. A highly creative person is eight times more likely to be depressed than the general population. But, I believed that his humor was saving his life, was channeling his depression into his art. I believed Robin Williams was harvesting madness. What I have to take away is that even if there is a correlation between depression and creativity, it is not a divine or causal relationship necessarily. You must express one and treat the other. You must take both seriously. Neither is a weakness, and both are just a part of who you are. Part of what you need to express to live, to really live.