Part of the reason that I dwell so much on the nature of the work of some members of my family is that I have had the increasing sense with passing time that the forces that surrounded me had a diffractive effect between myself and the world, as to who I was and what I was trying to do. (And at times exerted a diffractive effect on my own understanding.) Part of it is that it's just odd to have struck out to do three eminently achievable things and to have struck out in peculiar circumstances as to all three. People tend to have fixed ideas about things and people, and excessive artifice in gift-giving usually betrays the recipient of the gift.
Classical location for the thought, perhaps, as odd as it might sound: Heidegger on the ontological distinction. We have being, and tend to see other beings as objects, not really fathoming what it is to be.
Onward.