All My Life

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, "Battle Royal"~