Frankly - and believe me, I say this without any pretense - when I see the road I've taken, I have to say that thanks to good luck, because without good luck one can do nothing, I've come out pretty well. ↗
When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books. ↗
So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn. ↗