This paper as an account, as metaphor, and as a personal narrative is about the impact on me of my trip to South Africa more than twenty-five years ago. There is something about this moment in time, in my evolving development, which remains in my view, still present, for me, for the us in my mind. This paper explores questions that I have had for a very long time about the “evolving self.” The questions center around how we gain consciousness and evolve the meaning from our life experiences that shape our beliefs, our attitudes, and our emotions, and that compel us to act, to change from our thinking and acting, to resist change, and to develop. With an oblique view of my trip to South Africa, I explore impressions of that experience to speculate about the process of gaining “self” awareness. The underlying précis is that this “evolving self” is aided in the development of awareness, in the growth and change process, through exposure to significant life events involving an encounter with “the other,” often a very different other.