Before you read any farther, listen to these songs, as perhaps they will speak more than the words I can use. Go ahead, this is the Internet, there's nothing stopping you:

- The Sounds of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel)

- I Am...I Said (Neil Diamond)

- Mr. Roboto (Styx)

From each of these songs, I have found my own interpretations, and among those interpretations I have found a consistent theme. I call this theme personal isolation. As Simon and Garfunkel described their song, people have trouble communicating, especially emotionally.

It is more or less a common saying: "Even though I am in a crowd of people, I am alone." The main characters in A Cinderella Story said this, but such feelings do not just belong to ideal fictional protagonists. These feelings belong to everybody. Every day, someone walks into an ocean of people splashing about. Every day, someone drowns. Every day, someone goes with the flow.

Once I felt that nothing was genuine, that everything was artificial, and that it all seemed wrong. Being autistic, it is a feeling I have come to very often. The one thing I knew for certain was that none of my relationships with friends were quite right, and there was nothing "special" to any of it. As Anne Frank said in her first chapter, "nothing out of the common round". What a brilliant mind at such a young age, despite what she thought of herself.

We don't always want everyone to see our true identity. We don't put up a facade, but we only express certain parts of ourselves, and perhaps that is healthy. Certain things need to be kept to ourselves, or at least to our selves and select people who we feel secure with.

Sometimes we need a friend who we can go to when we experience the death of a loved one, or if there are problems in the family, or if we are just stressed out, perhaps just for the silliest of reasons. We also need to be the type of friends who can accept someone when they reveal that they too are merely human. To give an example, the person whom I currently consider to be my best friend in school understood that I had jealousy problems, but he did not judge me.

Much more important than defining ourselves, we must understand others. The main reason I felt as lonely as I did was not because of anything I did, but because nobody wanted to take the time to get to know me. Many times, we make assumptions of other people and make over-simplified images of their character, not wanting to bother understanding the human complexities, the dreams, desires, fears, problems, and feelings that are the ingredients to identity. We should pay attention to other people and get to know better who they are, making a less vague image of who they are. Don't put others under a microscope; you don't need to know everything, just what you need to know.

When I talk of personal isolation, I speak not just of communication, but again of another thing that Simon and Garfunkel addressed, and the issue is certainly more important: we fail to care for and love each other. Perhaps some people might be queasy to use the word "love". I am not. Love is a very strong, and very paramount, concept. Personal isolation does not just prevent us from communicating and from revealing our identity, it prevents us from truly caring.

In fact, the reason why communication should be encouraged in the first place is because it will make it easier to love, and make it easier for us to do good. How does caring make a difference? If a friend is hurt, being there for them only amounts to a hill of beans if you don't do so because you care, and most people can tell. What would guarantee that you would be there to help others anyways if you didn't even care? Even when someone wasn't in trouble, would you go out of the way to be the best person for them you could? You can do good for others even when there aren't huge problems to tackle. There are always things that you can do for others. You can even help them by leaving them alone if that's what needs to be done. Whatever your do, however, do it because you care.

(Special thanks to Snoopy82 and bonesiii, without whom this entry might have never made it this far)