Modern life encourages us to atomize ourselves away from interdependence, toward feelings of self-reliance, toward the ability to buy or outsource or hire for anything we need, reassured that it will arrive at our door within 24 hours. All of this should feel like magic, and yet somehow it does not. The mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and social toll of abstracting domestic life away from collectives — whether genetic, geographic, cultural, or chosen — are not just well documented across studies and articles and op-eds; they are manifestly abundant in our daily lives. We seem to be doing life backward: We live alone and expend effort to gather together, as if that’s the healthy baseline; instead of starting with togetherness as the foundation, and striking out for aloneness when we need it.