“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere
I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their
answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even
self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and
asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I,
could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone
else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but
myself. RALPH ELLISON, The Invisible Man”