One of our local television news reporters does a weekly special called “Eric’s Heroes.” Each week he highlights a “normal” citizen who quietly does acts of goodwill in the community. It’s a feel-good segment, one of the few things on the weekly news reports I look forward to.
Last week he did a segment about a young man who daily goes to Green Lake, sits down on a park bench, and holds up a sign which says: “I desire a conversation. Will you talk with me?” He will sit there for about an hour each day, and invariably one or two complete strangers will stop and talk with the young man about life and all manner of things.
The young man, during the interview, explained that originally he began doing that because he suffers from clinical depression, and he wanted desperately to interact with people and not stay in his bedroom, tucked into the fetal position. So he forces himself, each day, to walk to that park bench and interact with people.
It was a touching story. It is a story I can relate to as a writer.
No, I don’t suffer from clinical depression, but I am painfully shy and introverted. Conversations are difficult for me. Always have been and I suspect they always will be . . . so writing is my way of communicating with other people. It is my way of reaching out and screaming “I’m alive and I need all of you!” It is my release from a self-imposed prison.
More naps these days
I suspect I’m not alone. I suspect many writers are like me. Heck, I suspect many people who are not writers are like me. For some of us, face-to-face conversation is like a trip to the dentist. While most people seem to instinctively know how to carry on a casual conversation, I am lost in tall forest and dense undergrowth. Social gatherings are like “death by a thousand paper cuts” for me.
So I write! I reach out, with my words, and attempt to connect on some basic level with other human beings, in hopes of making a vital connection, in hopes of bridging the deep canyon I am always facing.
And so it goes!
If you would like to watch the aforementioned episode, follow this link.
Bill
“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”
Billybuc
Artistry With Words 