That’s what I discovered about myself last night. I told myself I was wandering around like a lost soul, and then I saw that I was lost. Somehow I’ve become separated emotionally from everyone and everything. And what I was really searching for out there in the dark streets—the last damned place I could ever find it—was a way to make myself a part of people again emotionally, while still retaining my freedom intellectually. I’ve got to grow up. For me it means everything…

— Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966

This! This is more or less the realisation I had in the desert in Australia.