The Mystery of Essence

The word essence makes it sound like the soul or something mysterious that just is there in us and we may or may not realize it. Sartre famously said, well, the standard view in philosophy was that essence precedes existence,. So you have your essence, and then your existence unrolls out of it, as it were. I don't think experience can change us that radically beyond a certain point. It's a fact about genetic constitution and early upbringing that we are amazingly unique.