They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

...the whole 'know thyself' thing isn’t a journey to a fixed destination. Learning about myself changes me, forcing me to learn more. 'Know thyself' isn’t a goal; it’s a road.

A fine line exists between quitting on ourselves and letting go of a restrictive position in life and moving forward to reach our ultimate destination based upon our natal predisposition honed by a lifetime of experimentation. Who has not been forced to stop and ask ourselves, ‘who are we,’ ‘what are we doing,’ and ‘where are we going?’ Who has not been forced to pause by life’s dynamic forces and ask ourselves, ‘what mystical chords bind us as a species; what is the meaning of life; and how do we give birth to our genetic blueprint while shaping a sense of purposefulness out of our own existence and striving to bring joy to other people’s hearth?’ To answer these life affirming questions that gnaw most voraciously at our consciousness at the time when tension and unsettling trauma besieges us, we must appreciate our heritage, be mindful our epoch, accept responsibility for our adult decisions, and strive to accumulate wisdom that segues our entrance into the future. Each of us must arrive at a unifying philosophy that guides our living quest, and the sooner we come to terms with our eccentric self the quicker we will perceive and appreciate the ineffable beauty of nature.

If there's one thing every good novelist understands, it's that our inner world is unreliable and yet there's no getting beyond it. Every sense is subject to deception, including the moral sense. What seems at first like the hard surface of spiritual reality is really fathomless when you dive down into it. There is no bottom. We neve know anything for sure. (p. xvi)

Knowledge is justice

If you ate nails, your stomach would hurt, and it’s a good thing that it would. Eating nails is deadly, thus the pain is helpful. Like this, sadness, anger, and anxiety are not to be feared or shamed, but listened to and decoded.