Humans are the only beings conscious of themselves. Nurses are human beings. As such we are capable of looking at our existence, choosing our values, giving our world meaning and of constantly transcending ourselves, or becoming more. If we value and prize our human nursing world and our human potential for consciousness and expression, we will actuate our potential and conceptualize our human nurse-world. This suggests questions to me. What do I want nursing to be? How can I influence the meaning of the term, nursing? How committed am I? What investment am I willing to make? Will I risk exploring and saying what I see in my nursing world? Am I open to knowing? How can I actuate my uniqueness to allow the realistic potential of my nursing profession to become, become ever more? Am I contributing my "nursing here and now" to nursing's history through a lasting form of expression? Of what importance is what I think or say; do I make any difference? Hermann Hesse says of each man's uniqueness: "... every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again."[10] Or, a nurse might say: "... every nurse is more than just herself, she also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the nursing world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again." To me, human freedom means recognizing our unique potential, responsibility, and limitations. Our singularity as a nurse among nurses, then, confronts us with a responsibility that belongs to one else. Martin Buber, philosophical anthropologist says: "As we become free ... our responsibility must become personal and solitary."[11] Our unlikeness to other nurses is a lonely, very person conditioned state. Only each nurse can be responsible for herself. The wonders of freedom are {70} paradoxically, "all-at-once," both a delight and a burden. In nursing it is important for us to understand freedom not as opposing or agreeing: freedom is choosing--choosing and saying "yes" to one's self. Human endeavor between man and men in their-worlds, in this instance professional clinical nursing, if explored and described is viewed as contributing to man's human evolvement and to knowledge of the human condition and how man becomes.