I don't re-run pieces on Scripting News, as some blogs do, but I do point to them when they're relevant, like Men Stay Silent, written in 1998. I found myself thinking of the last part of the piece in relation to Robin Williams.

• Men stay silent. We manipulate symbols to express ourselves. We bottle up who we are. We try to achieve the vision the world has for us, whether it's true or not.

Robin Williams was much-loved, and that was no accident, he worked hard at it. When you laughed so hard it hurt, that was your body saying, wow I really love this guy!

• Williams might have been the most love-seeking person on the planet, the most demonstrative at proving he was worthy of love.

It's the symbols. If he had said directly what we wouldn't let him say, because of his gender, age, etc -- it would have gone like this. "I need to know you love me. I need to feel that connection. I need to get your eyes to laugh in ways I can't get my own to. I need to see in you what I feel myself, and can't. That I am worthy of love."

Human beings come in all sizes and shapes on the outside, but on the inside our motives are basically the same. We want to know we'll be fed and housed and not cast out in the cold, to starve and freeze to death. The tactics we use to obtain that sense of security vary, but the goal is the same.

I hope you'll read the 1998 piece because a lot of what it says is exposed in our thoughts and feelings around Williams' death. Thanks.