Michael Jackson was gone too soon

This week’s winner

 Manila, Philippines -  Analy F. Cutay is a government employee, working at the Department of Agrarian Reform. She has a BS Agricultural Economics degree from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños.

I was hooked the moment I read the first few pages of this book.

“I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.”

I read and read and read. I was compulsively obsessed in finishing it.

The subject of the book is a very interesting celebrity, none other than Michael Jackson.

Michael started performing early in life, missing out on most of his childhood years. And he felt regretful about this.

“The most formative experience in Michael’s life was being forced into entertainment from approximately the age of five. Michael felt he had been robbed of not just an essential part of life but the most magical part.

“He longed to recapture it and spent his remaining days doing just that. Some argued that Michael was a case of arrested development. Michael Jackson chose not to grow up.”

I felt sad for him when he revealed that when he was a child, he was physically abused by his father.

Michael pursued excellence, thinking it would fill his need for family love. Unfortunately, it did not. He also seemed to have this sort of Messianic complex — he thought his purpose was to save the children from their sufferings.

And Rabbi Shmuley confirmed that, definitely, Michael was not gay. Michael revealed in the interview why his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley did not last long.

“I wanted children and she didn’t … she promised me that before we married, that would be the first thing we’d do was have children. So I was broken-hearted and I walked around all the time holding these little baby dolls and I’d be crying, that’s how badly I wanted them. So I was determined to have children. It disappointed me that she wouldn’t keep her promise to me, you know? After we got divorced she would hang out with my mother all the time. I have all these letters saying, ‘I’ll give you nine children, I’ll do whatever you want,’… I just became too hard-hearted at that point. I closed my mind to the whole situation.”

As a singer, composer and dancer, his talent could not be questioned. He enjoyed worldwide popularity. He was really blessed, but he took for granted his gift of health.

After all that has been said and written about him, I think he still deserves a little respect for the valuable contributions he made in the music industry, despite the pedophilia charges hurled against him.

I learned from the book that:

• no amount of success can compensate for lack of inner peace in one’s life;

• and among the living things inhabiting the earth, humans are the only species that destroy their own kind.

I felt sorry for his early demise. He was gone too soon.

When I was done reading The Michael Jackson Tapes (A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul In Intimate Conversation) by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, I said a prayer for him. May he find true peace and love that he so longed for when he was still alive.