Thank you very much for your response, I appreciated your piece immediately as a story of a journey. Journeys are almost always instructive, and almost always compelling. Joni Mitchell wrote "I don't who I am, but life is for learning."

Contradictions in philosophy mirror contradictions in life. I tried to read philosophy, internalize what I found real, throw out the rest, and accept the remaining contradictions.

Beyond that, it didn't provide any emotional growth. That was a separate journey, though the distance covered seems nearly meaningless.

Thank you again for the dialogue.