– I understand, then, that existence is not a relation to an object, but an opening to a world. A world not as a collection of things, but as a field of meaning in the process of being born. This meaning is not given in advance. It does not precede the event. It takes shape in the encounter, in the accord or discord between what comes and my capacity to respond to it. To exist is to risk a response without knowing whether it will be possible.

– Like our master…

– I am never the master of my existence. If I were, it would no longer be existence, but mere functioning. To exist presupposes an original possibility: I can be affected. Something can happen to me that belongs neither to my project nor to my will. What truly exists is not what I control, but what surprises me, what compels me to transform myself in order to receive it.

There is within existence a dimension of essential estrangement. Like Don Carotte, I do not coincide with myself. I always discover myself elsewhere than where I thought I was.