That I am nobody but myself

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 naive. 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