Everyone wants to feel one of a kind, and the speaker begins there: the shared human wish to live in a style that belongs only to us, untouched by other people's thinking. Then the poem turns on that wish. The same person who craves originality ends up walking paths others have already crossed, repeating what countless people before them have done.
The speaker's tone feels quietly critical, even a little sad. There's no anger here, just a calm observation of an irony. The final lines carry the sharpest point: these people "never met themselves" and "never knew who they were." The suggestion is that real originality needs self-knowledge, and without it we copy others while believing we're unique. The mood is reflective and slightly uneasy, leaving the reader to wonder whether they are one of these followers too.