Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
-Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

I have been wondering recently about self-knowledge and how one is affected by surroundings - where one lives, who one is with... It is so easy to become a different person everywhere one goes. Now granted those differences may be subtle, but for all their subtlely, how deeply do they go? How much of the real self remains constant and unchanged? And how much in the end does it matter? If one finds happiness and goodness somewhere, is there some falsehood in desiring to be there when one know that in other places one would act differently... It almost seems that there is, but perhaps that is a reaction to wanting there not to be...