The man and the mirror

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009

You'd have to be living in a cave or breaking up with your mistress in Argentina not to know that we lost three great stars this past week. The deaths of Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett were more or less expected:  Ed was an old man, and Farrah was dying very publicly from cancer. Michael Jackson's death at the age of 50, however, took us all by surprise, and it is pre-empting everything else.

People will complain, perhaps rightly, that Michael's death is eclipsing "real news," such as the failing economy, the plight of health care, or the political drama unfolding in Iran. These stories are certainly important, and they will affect our lives more explicitly than the death of a star. And yet we are transfixed by Michael's sudden passing.

Why are we so affected when someone really famous dies? When Princess Diana died, the world stopped to mourn her. Some people are bigger than life. They become so big that they become someone else entirely, as we collectively project a mythic story onto them, defining them, critiquing them, adoring them, and sometimes despising them. This story becomes so real that even its protagonist (or antagonist) becomes confused about who they are. Michael Jackson lived his entire life being defined by the story of who we wanted him to be, instead of knowing who he was.

The truth is, of course, that we all live like this, trying to find our truth and figure out who we really are. Trying to escape the stories projected onto us by others. Trying to find our authentic selves. But most of us are fortunate not to have every newspaper and periodical joining the chorus of "You should be this way!" It takes a strong person not to break under this kind of pressure.

Depending on your point of view, Michael Jackson was either a gifted performer who brought happiness to millions of people, or he was a human oddity whose behavior outshined his gifts. This is a simplistic picture, and the human being was far more complex. Here was a person who was struggling to find his healing and his happiness, and nothing seemed to be working for him. Here also was a person struggling with his own darkness. Regardless of the truth behind the accusations (did he? didn't he?), Michael was struggling with his own inability to love himself. And this is universal to us all.

If you listen to Michael's music, however, you find a man who could channel the Light. When he sang "The Man in the Mirror," he was talking about himself. He knew; he could hear. And he brought that Light into the world. If you watch him perform, you can feel the energy and the love that flowed through him, uplifting the enraptured crowd and carrying them away with him. In these moments, he was fulfilling his divine purpose—perfectly.

The message for all of us is that we do not have to be perfect to fulfill our purpose and bring Light into the world. We can struggle, we can be searching, and this is just part of our journey. God doesn't wait for perfect messengers. Our divinity shines through us all in some form or another, just as we are, without "fixing." We are already perfect. Perhaps if Michael could have felt that and forgiven himself, he would have found the peace he was seeking.

In death, Michael's myth will grow well beyond the humble human being who lived beneath it for so long. Like Elvis, Marilyn, and even the likes of Albert Einstein, our memory of him will not be based on who he actually was. For some, he'll be a hero and a musical genius. For others, he will be the target for their own fears and insecurities—it's much easier to feel better about yourself if you can look down on someone who was larger than life. Michael has become a cultural archetype, really. The wounded Tin Man, perhaps, rusting from his tears and searching for his heart.

We seem to need these public figures, these living archetypes. It is a weighty burden that we place on their shoulders. Susan Boyle bore the burden for a few short weeks, and it was enough to cause a mental breakdown. How much harder must it be to grow up with it from a very young age?

So why do we do it? Why do we have such deep feelings for people we don't know and may never know? Because they are us. We see ourselves in them, and their story is our story. We recognize their triumphs and their sorrows, their happiness and their pain. And it touches us.

Whether Michael is viewed as a demigod or a devil, he was one of the people we have collectively chosen to endow with our love, our joy, our hate, our disgust, and thousands of other emotions. And as he sang "The Man in the Mirror," for us he was the mirror:  our mirror. He reflected back to us what we saw in ourselves. He showed us the love that we needed to give to ourselves and the joy we needed to accept. He illuminated our own self-hatred and disgust so that we could learn to love the parts of ourselves that we have deemed unlovable.

Michael may have struggled throughout his life. He may have been deeply unhappy. He probably made a lot of mistakes. But did he fail? Of course not. Failure is impossible. There is only learning process. We are just thankful that he shared his process with us. In this, he was a powerful teacher, and we are blessed to have known him.

Michael Jackson has left the stage. May he rest in peace.