One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

Mead’s line frames belonging as a primal requirement rather than a modern luxury: beyond food or shelter, people need to be socially “held in mind.” The image of someone noticing your absence—wondering where you are when you don’t come home—captures the emotional security provided by kinship, friendship, and community surveillance in the best sense: care, accountability, and recognition. The quote also implies that isolation is not merely inconvenient but psychologically destabilizing, because it removes the assurance that one’s life matters to others. In Mead’s anthropological spirit, it suggests that across cultures, social bonds function as a basic human infrastructure for safety and meaning.