A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from Questions Asked, chapter 3

You can know how markets move, how engines work, how other people think, and still have no idea what would make you happy — because happiness isn’t out there among the facts. It’s a fit between a life and a self, and only one of those can be studied secondhand.

Self-knowledge is what holds the rest together: “Knowledge of self is like the foundation on which you can build your life up.” It works like an interface between you and your own life. Without it, “a life with ‘everything’ can easily mean nothing” — you can’t feel a want being met if you never worked out what you want.

So the unhappy stretches are rarely a shortage of information. They come from situations that go against who you are, left standing because you can’t yet say what should replace them. Innocent keeps one question running underneath everything for exactly this reason: who am I?