Mother—the enigma, the force of nature, the essential thing to leave behind. By leave behind, I mean various things, such as "not allow to run your life" and "resolve the issues that you inherited from her and her mother." I also mean the role of mother, when that role is more or less finished, or when it's ready to transform. Yet here is what really needs to transform for our whole society—the family as the authoritarian mini-state, borrowing from the words of a great 20th century philosopher. If we want any scant possibility to live on some shared level ground with one another, or to explore any collective form of leadership, we must go beyond the model of absolute authority that is then internalized into perpetual inhibition and approval-seeking. Father plays a role in this, though in our generations that more often involves being absent or only partially present than it does the former "father knows best" model of family. This can still manifest as the disembodied, nagging conscience—what another philosopher called the superego. You need order in your life. Anarchy will not suffice. But neither will the absolute rule of law, emotional or otherwise. The thing to remember is that personal autonomy requires maturity and an evolved sense of responsibility, though one that does not demand answering to someone else.