Analytical pursuit of the ontological question as to whether value should be placed on someone [beyond the familial realm] is a poetic question. The answer lies well beyond reason, logic or even cognition. It lies well beyond the physical or aesthetic realms.

The answer may be found within the deepest regions of our existential Self and its appertaining journey toward essence. During the course of this journey, we shall meet Others whose respective essences linger and become interwoven within our nostalgic impressions and Sartrean Past. Thus, he or she becomes a transcendence-transcended.

Time and Being attempt to rob us of these impressions by lessening their respective valuation, especially within the scope of nothingness. Therein lies the existential mystery as the Being For Itself (etre-pour-soi) becomes immovably intertwined with an Object outside the Self [even within the Other's absence]. How does one reconcile the Subjective and Object reality, or unify the three temporal ekstases?

Our individual self-concepts are predicated on these impressions. Our present identity has been established through personal experiences. Historian Arnold J. Toynebee in the Study of History suggests that the individual life journey and appertaining personal experiences mirror that of the societal journey on a micro-level. Our individual journey is demarcated by a series or cycle of deathlike and birthlike experiences. Our former self-concept perishes and through that metaphorical mortality we are, in most cases, born into a greater sense of awareness.

It then follows that we carry with us certain impressions from our former lives. Collectively, these impressions form who we are as people. It should be noted that this is a selective process wherein the greater number of impressions will perish with that metaphorical death. Thus, the impressions left by Others, the impressions we carry from life to life hold a much greater significance for we have chosen to carry and maintain that essential part of our Being.

These particular musings underlie and form the sub-text of all Literature. Thus, we engage the Ancients to contemporaneous writers, attempting to unravel the mystery. The answer, however, lies in our own hearts and the subjective journey toward our Being's essence. It is our poetic spirit alone that shall grasp the answer and find meaning in this journey.