"Be who you really are."  So urged Lao Tzu, the founder and principal exponent of Taoism (or Daoism), the influential philosophy of balance and oneness that originated in the Zhou dynasty of China past.  Taoism is probably most famous for its diagram of Yin and Yang, that intriguing swirl of dark and light set into a circle.
     Lao's encouragement raises interesting questions.  Do any of us know who we really are?  Sure, we know our name, and sure, we know where we live, and sure, we know, usually, what we are doing on a given day or point in time, but if we are forced to sit down and ask ourselves, really, who we are, we may have a problem.  If we say that we are human beings, we are doing so on the basis of our previous understanding that we are indeed human beings, simply affirming what we have already decided is binding and true.  We only know on the basis of what we know.
     On the other hand, we may nurture a vision for self-improvement or a certain vocational aspiration.  We may wish to be something other than what we, in terms of our character or activities, are today.  In most instances, we likely are doing so because we believe that when we attain this change in character or activity, we will be a different (maybe a better, maybe a more fulfilled) person.  And it will be this, we believe, that represents who we really are, the person, given all possibilities, we most ought to be.
     Underlying both ideas, that is, the circularity of our humanness and our desire for improvement, is that whatever we believe or aspire to, we do so in a vacuum, a vacuum of finitude and humanness.  In the end, we are measuring everything by ourselves, a prospect which doesn't take into account all parameters and possibilities, principally the metaphysical, in which we walk.  It is only in the latter that we can understand who we are, because it is only in the latter that finitude finds its full explanation.  A circle only explains itself.