"I want to be different. Everyone does. Everyone is. But there are two kinds of different: There are those people who love attention. They need it. And they are noticed because they try to be. But there are those that do things differently, quietly, and are noticed not because they try to be, but because they are special. It is this kind of person that I can tolerate; this kind of person that I admire; this kind of person that I aim to be." - Gregoire
"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." --Lily Tomlin
With that preamble, I'll start by telling you I was born in the south west of England, and have always been both blessed and cursed by a ready appreciation of pantheism.
"...the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe." - Alan Watts
It gets a little tricky here, as I'm writing this for the benefit of others whilst trying to highlight that we are all one, and I'm therefore (Q.E.D.[ish]) writing this for my own benefit. No matter; I need all the help I can get.
As Herman Hesse famously noted, "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." This is undoubtedly true, yet almost impossible to hold in conscious attention when someone selfishly eats the last biscuit you thought rightfully yours. The point is that this is about you- not me- or do I mean the other way around?
The video below meanders slightly off topic at times, but holds a lot of truth. It is over an hour long, but if you watch just the first 65 seconds you'll get a flavour of it. It features Bruce Lipton,, who's doing truly incredible things with the interplay between genetics and environment. I will test you to see if you've watched it before answering any biographical questions you field from here on. The underlying point, in all seriousness, is about taking responsibility, which I clumisly (sic) addressed in my increasingly-dated opening essay. Obviously I keep highlighting this because, as the Hesse quote makes clear, there is an issue here that I need to resolve. And so, the snake eats its own tail...