challenge the rock

It has something to do, certainly, with what I was trying to discover and, also, trying to avoid. If I was trying to discover myself - on the whole, when examined, a somewhat dubious notion, since I was also trying to avoid myself - there was certainly, between that self and me, the accumulated rock of ages. This rock scarred the hand, and all tools broke against it. Yet, there was a me, somewhere: I could feel it, stirring within and against captivity. The hope of salvation - identity - depended on whether or not one would be able to decipher and describe the rock. (...) it was necessary to challenge and claim the rock. Otherwise, the rock claimed me. 

- Notes of a Native Son (1953), from the preface of the 1984 edition, James Baldwin