Journey and Return / Differentiation and Integration

Being exposed to individuals who are not part of one's collective kinship group has the effect of sharpening one's own sense of individuality, if only faintly. It is said that urban life creates isolation and aloneness. But it also creates a unique self able to identify with other unique selves by way of empathic extension. Partially weaned from the collectivity, one begins the process of reconnecting to others, this time as individual beings, and, by so doing, furthering one's own sense of selfhood.