Being alone feels relaxing because merging into eating or sleeping or watching TV doesn’t take much effort. But I’ve learned that just staying comfortable doesn’t help me with the important task of regaining autonomy and a sense of myself. For that I need to settle in to the harmony of my own being, which takes a lot of work because I have

heroic individualism and its most prevalent symptoms—restlessness, feeling rushed, low-level angst, scatteredness, exhaustion, burnout, periods of emptiness, a compulsion to keep chasing the next thing, and recurrent longing—all of which are supported by mounting data that we’ll soon examine, describe what so many people report feeling these days.