Thanks for leaving your thoughts! Especially the idea that Self circles back to Unself. Interesting .. { taps finger on lips, thinking }.

I’m very excited for you marrying into a family of five people! That’ll be the real deal. Wow. Kudos and all the best!

As a lifelong single person, I have a strange but to me true observation…. which is that if you take being a “self” to its logical extreme, it circles back into being an “unself” to use your words. Buber writes that the fundamental state of being is “I and thou.” I found this in my own life, for example, in my religious practice. At one point I was almost monastic and reached a point where self-exploration, rather than shrinking my world, opened it up wide and wonderful with new depth. Somehow I think that is the point of that kind of self-knowing. That foundation led me in new directions, one of which was to my husband. He too has 4 children, and was married over 20 years when widowed. We complement each other’s growth now in this wonder of life called family. We are better off, and I think his children are too, for finding this common ground in love.