It’s been five years since the world lost Chris Cornell.
Cornell was a rock star, sure. But beyond the extraordinary vocal talent he possessed, beyond the numerous bands he fronted, beyond either stage or studio, I can’t help but think about Chris Cornell, not as a rock star, but as a person. He had a wife and children, family, and friends, that he loved and who loved him in return.
He was human, not infallible. He experienced the same joys and struggles we all do, and like many of us, his struggles included the added burdens of depression and anxiety. Tragically, the weight of those burdens ultimately took his life, and serves to remind us of life’s porcelain-like fragility.
We have a propensity to elevate rock stars to an unrealistic, god-like status, unconsciously putting them on pedestals, assuming that they are somehow different from us, somehow removed from the common battlefield of life on which we struggle every day for survi…