What shall I become? This question, among a few others, has been the animating lure in my life since I was sixteen, maybe a bit earlier; I’m sure Piaget has his explanations for why, but I’ll continue to toss psychology aside. What shall I become? This question, which has plagued all of the great poets and thinkers of all ages, has tortured me as well. The answer doesn’t arise, come forth to the front of the mind, it doesn’t secrete itself into a tangible form, it doesn’t crystallize, it isn’t even a gaseous form. What we become is apprehended in retrospect, if at all, for us, it is only others, perhaps, who know what we became, what we were—no one knows, least of all us, what we are, now, in the moment, present-being; being, as Heidegger knew, had not been ascertained, inhabited, incarnated, yet but could, one day: but it is not today, not yet.
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