The Creation of My Own Self

"You could say that the essence of humanity -- the thing that we all share, and makes us distinct from anything else in the world -- is our lack of essence, our 'no-thing-ness,' our freedom. We cannot be captured by a philosophical system or a psychological theory; we cannot be reduced to physical and chemical processes; our futures cannot be predicted with social statistics. Some of us are men, some are women; some are black, some are white; some come from one culture, some from another; some have one imperfection, some another. The 'raw materials' differ dramatically, but it is how we choose to live that makes each of us what we are. We each create ourselves." -Harry Stack Sullivan