"All consciousness is perceptual...The perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence."
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
A big old $2.00 word filled sentence to express a very, very simple concept: we choose to make our lives and ourselves - no one or nothing else makes that decision. We may think or believe that certain events or certain people made us who we are, but they didn't.