Sign Me Up?

I'm in an odd situation and it's definitely age related - not in a bad way either. Events of the last year showed up a fundamental disconnection with the process of life, which I've now started to deal with in embedding meditation and meditation classes into my life. But where does this end, where should the boundaries be? I as much as everyone else, want desperately to believe that I am unique, that I am unlike anyone who's gone before and that I can determine every aspect of my uniqueness. But the more I'm learning about myself this year, the more I realise that my uniqueness has limitations - I'm determined strongly by my friends, I'm determined strongly by my parents, and by my family. Those elements I have no control over and they're as much fundamentals as my sexual orientation.

What I'm trying to get at is if I start down the road of exploring Buddhist meditation, how free am I really to cherry pick? Totally free ultimately, but doesn't there come a point that that's just hubris? The reason for cherry picking after all is to protect my uniqueness at all costs, but if that's just a defensive imagining of myself? Is it time to succumb to a realistic imagining of myself and completely give myself over to a system of thought, a communal way of being? I don't have any answers yet - I think I have a lot to read before that.