I do not think we know what it takes to make us happy, and our wanderings in search of individual happiness have led us to all points of absurdity. We have been running from limits, believing that all limits are oppressive and no limits at all is freedom. We want self-expression and autonomy, to discover ourselves, to become our own. Our private life becomes unmoored from any cultural foundation, and we must invent our lives and then defend our invention, a process ultimately doomed. When you get to a place of complete personal rights, you are, by definition, there alone.

Part of learning to belong is learning to be beholden in the right ways.