The challenge in life is not just to be our self, but to choose the self we want to be. What we call "the self" is never static, but instead is a work in progress. That's why we don't discover who we are by sitting alone on a mountaintop or meditating, or by being introspective, as valuable as these disciplines are. The royal road for both discovering and reinventing the self is through our relationships with other people and the conversations we engage in.