I recently got coffee with a professor and I was, of course, ranting about school, classes, friendships and family. With a voice thick with frustration, I said, "People act like they're entitled to your time and energy.”
All she did was stare and smile. After a minute or two, she replied, quietly but firmly: "Maybe they are."
The 2020s have turned self-preservation into a cultural mantra. Social media continuously reminds us that we “don’t owe anyone an explanation,” and viral posts urge us to guard our time, energy and boundaries with the intensity of a nation protecting its borders. It’s a seductive narrative: that we are autonomous and untouchable, existing solely to preserve our own peace. But what does a culture obsessed with what we don’t owe each other lose in the process?
This isn’t a call to martyrdom. I’m not asking anyone to erase boundaries or sacrifice yourself on the altar of obligation. The TikTok girlies aren’t always wrong. I’m asking others to consider that the act of owing — of investing, of tethering yourself to another person — can be an act of liberation, not entrapment. Because at the end of the day, we do owe each other things. Not in a transactional sense where every favor demands a return, but in the quiet, human sense that living alongside one another requires care, community and love.
Owing is not a dirty word. To many, owing someone something feels like surrendering autonomy — like admitting a kind of debt that undermines our freedom. But historically, owing has been the glue of community — the framework of reciprocity that made survival possible. Somewhere along the way, we’ve swapped that mutual accountability for a rugged individualism that leaves us lonelier than ever.
I wonder how this shift has consequences: the coworker who assumes every kind gesture hides an agenda, the friend who dismisses your vulnerability as oversharing or the sibling who stops calling because they don’t want to seem needy. Our insistence that we owe nothing to anyone turns into an existential arms race, where relationships become battles to see who can care less.
This refusal to owe actually makes us weaker. It isolates us from the very networks that sustain us. It makes it harder to recognize when others are offering something genuine, harder to extend grace when we inevitably falter. We’re so desperate to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of connection that we forget vulnerability is the price of any connection worth having.
There’s a certain bravery in reclaiming the idea of owing, in admitting that the act of giving yourself to others is not weakness but strength. To owe someone isn’t to lose your autonomy; it’s to make the deliberate choice to participate in the world. It’s the friend who stays up late to listen, the partner who forgives the small annoyances, the stranger who offers kindness with no expectation of return.
We owe each other attention in a world designed to fragment it. We owe patience in a culture that rewards instant gratification. We owe each other grace: not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only thing that makes the weight of living bearable. Owing others is an act of resistance and liberation.
It’s not glamorous to talk about obligation. It doesn’t fit neatly into the aesthetic of radical self-care. But when we strip our relationships of obligation, we also strip them of depth. The question isn’t whether we owe each other; it’s whether we’re brave enough to admit it.
Maybe what we owe each other isn’t a burden but a truth: Our lives are fuller and more meaningful when they’re intertwined with others. To owe isn’t to lose freedom — it’s to recognize our shared humanity and admit that none of us can do this alone. Real liberation comes from choosing connection, accepting its challenges and knowing it’s the price of truly belonging to the world.
Aashi Mendpara is a senior from Orlando, Fla. majoring in Neuroscience and Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column shares reflections on her childhood, growing relationships, getting older and navigating life’s changes.
