Hi David, thanks for sharing your perspective. Your point is well taken. People live different lifestyles for various reasons. As a species, we are geared to live in community with others, in some kind or another. Belonging to a tribe or community is one of our most powerful needs. John Lennon famously said, “No man is an island… he’s a peninsula.” I surmise that this man I wrote about had extremely limited human contact. I can’t fathom how he kept it up, being so alone for all those years living under a bridge. I think of solitary confinement in prison.

I long for a cabin in the woods, to live in a retreat, a less hectic life moving back to the natural world. But I’m clear that even with a desire to remove myself from what our civilization has become, I know that I need others, human contact in a community. I don’t think the man under the bridge had that. I hope he did, and I hope his eventual disappearance means he received some help and found a better and more fulfilling life. However, there is the possibility it might not mean that.

Jesse