Becoming and belonging

I really enjoyed today’s conversation with Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and expert on families and, specifically, family estrangement. We talked about the crises of homelessness and mental illness, but the conversation quickly expanded to encompass how inequality shapes parenting styles, the excesses of American individualism and the excesses of Indian collective-mindedness, and why it’s so hard — and important — to find the balance between helping individuals become themselves and giving people what we all also need — to belong.