relation is only possible between I and Thou. It is not the I, then, that is given up, but that false self-asserting instinct that makes a [person] flee to the possessing of things before the unreliable, perilous world of relation which has neither density nor duration and cannot be surveyed.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1956), 79.
Image: “Dream of Goldfish,” Jiří Meitner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 