there’s something valuable in that ideal: as adults, we need to learn to stand on our own feet, to achieve autonomy, to recognise that we don’t necessarily need the things we think we need. Yet we can become too independent, can strive for too much autonomy and invulnerability, ending up lonely and cut off. Loneliness, Vanier has written, is the great sickness of our time – and it partly comes from our shame at admitting that we’re all flawed, imperfect, wounded creatures.
