Videographer Bruce Childress filmed and edited a talk I gave at the Kennebunk Library. He placed it on YouTube and it’s also on my website.

All kinds of doors open out to the public, but perhaps digital ones nowadays loom over anything else.  In many ways this is good because whenever you like, you can find numerous postings on every topic in the world. You can become extremely highly educated just by sitting with a digital device!

But you have to walk through a real door to find real people. Live people teach you something very special that you cannot find on a device: human warmth. In this video I tell you how I found that warmth from fellow global beings and how it changed my life.

If you stay behind a door long enough, you become socially isolated, I think, but just what exactly is that? I think it means living more and more in your mind and not having your ideas tested by others. You might think your ideas are right! And what about your emotions??? Emotions in solitary living can be dangerous.

But we must ask why would someone become socially isolated in the first place? Severe shyness disorder could be a factor if the person is so riddled with ridicule by peers because they can’t join in a conversation, have friends, behave in a normal fashion, that they choose not to go out with people. Then there are quite a few mental conditions that could cause a person to live in social isolation, about which I know little to nothing. But they exist.

I do know what it’s like not to have a friend with whom you feel genuine, with whom you can share your most inner self. You sure feel like an outcast, like you’re some weirdo and wish with all your might that you were normal. Living in your mind with such depressing thoughts could trigger desperate behavior.

For me the desperate behavior compelled me to get involved with people without having to share my own ideas. I interviewed people about shyness, about introversion; I interviewed artists and wrote articles for the newspapers; I interviewed people to find out how they developed their world views, to form a talk for my church, but in secret it was in order for me to find out how to have a world view of my own.

For young people who have little education, who suffer at the hands of authority, at the nastiness of peers, they may not have such means to learn about themselves and how to express themselves. Young men especially, may take to guns, especially in our country where guns are everywhere and where violent films abound. Lacking guidance, they could become desperate to make a statement, however awful.

Indeed, I think we must make an effort to see that people who suffer from social isolation receive help from the health care system. Let’s call it Social Isolation Disorder and make the help very visible.

We must look behind closed doors, peer into Face Books, see what’s wrong, to see if someone is suffering.