Recently I've been curious about what drives an individual to become so-called " self-aware", and about the relationship between this self‑awareness and the inclination toward existential concepts. Hegel was once described as a man “who saw in the course of world events a universal spirit striving toward self‑realization.” Even if we are all part of some universal human condition, what is it, on the individual level, that creates the conditions for such realization to occur? What are its requirements, its limitations, its influencing factors? More interestingly, why do some people—seemingly independent of specific life events, personal histories, or even "personality"—appear to lack a capacity for self‑awareness altogether? And what do we actually mean when we say that someone is or is not self‑aware? Is an inclination toward the existential a permanent mode of being, or merely a heightened frequency of exploring questions about meaning, identity, and purpose...