"Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself it its own self. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. A synthesis is relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self." From the introduction of The Sickness Unto Death by Kierkegaard. The language is deliberately obtuse, but it's interesting nonetheless. What we are is an experience which experiences itself. I subscribe to Camus' idea of the Absurd Man. It seems to me that he lays out the best methodology for a full and happy life in The Myth of Sisyphus.