This seems a lesson in authenticity.  Those occasional moments when you say, do or think something and suddenly it rings hollow and tastes metallic, and you wonder who that person is because it isn’t you, that much you know. 

Such disconcerting feelings of being a stranger to yourself can be a spur to self-knowledge. 

‘To hear yourself, at least for an instant, without self-recognition, is to open your spirit to the tempests of change.’ 

See also a quotation from Zorba the Greek, who interrogates himself, and life, on a daily basis.  A spiritual equivalent to a bracing early morning swim. 

Source: Harold Bloom, Genius (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), p.29

Photo credit: ElisaRiva and Michael Gaida at pixabay.com