In the canvas of mind, he started drawing a life.
A life full of dreams, and aspirations, expectations.
It started with milk, baloons and bubblegums.
Shifted to Grades, and clasroom love stories soon enough.
As the seconds went by, the complicated chaos unravels.
What a pity, now its gritty, that canvas looks horrific.
Dreams over dreams over dreams, no space left!
Maybe, just white would do, Maybe that is enough.
An unexamined life is not worth living.
This is one of my favourite quotes from Socrates. What why and how "an unexamined life is not worth living" are the questions we should be asking from ourselves after reading the quote. And that is exactly what I am going to do in this article. Compare this quote with the following slogan from ancient eastern philosophers.
Appasuthayan puriso, baliwaddowa jirathi.
Mansanithass waddanthi panna thassana waddathi.
Above was an old quote, from ancient teachers of estern philosophy. It means, "the one who is not examining (life) will grow in muscle mass, just like a buffalo. But will never gain true wisdom."
I can't ignore the sarcasm, put forward by eastern philosophers, comparing one who do not think about life to a Buffalo instead telling such a life is "Not worth living". I am sure Socrates did not mean to pass such sarcasam towards his fellow deciples who did not follow his advice. More importantly we should attend to why we should examine our life before we are labeled as Buffalos.
Why should we examine life?
Reason 1
For a fact, we are not buffaloes. We know that life starts with birth and end in death. And neither of these events are in our control. Circumstances of our birth is a million dollar question which is still unanswered, and nobody knows what happens after death. On top of that in between these random events we are taught to belive we have a free will. If a banana is rotten on either sides, why do you expect the middle is delicious? Does it not smell fishy? For me it does.
Reason 2
Even if the either side is rotten, if the banna is lengthy enough we can assume there is good bit in the middle. If the life is lengthy enough, mabe 500 years atleast, I can put aside the task of examining life until I reach 250 years. Average life expectancy of human on earth linger around 72 years world wide. So at this scale I assume atleast 36 would be a good place to gain some wisdom as you have enough experience about the world at this point. More importantly, when the diseases, and the old age start to hit you, you would not be a strong buffalo even if you are superman.
Reason 3.
For a rational person above two reasons should be enough. There is no reason 3. However, inherent randomnoess of life would be a good candidate. Mind seems to be like a flag in the wind. It moves, whenever there is a wind. When there is rain, mind thinks about rain, when there is trouble mind thinks about trouble. When there is happiness, it starts to smile and dream. Nothing seems to be completely under control of the "Self". Hence mind is just a ball bounce between duality of the nature, in the wind provided by extremely interconnected chaos of reasons. Which can suddenly end, in a dumb way.
That concludes my reasons for supporting that unexamined life is not worth living.
How are we going to examine life? Mindfulness is the way.
Mindfulness is the tool we use to examine our life.
Imagine a scientist is doing an experiment. He would initially make a hypothesis from avialable evidence (after a litereture review) and then conduct an experiment on the hypothesis. He would collect data from control and the experiment cohorts and prove or disprove the hypothesis. He may have to repeat the experiment. However, in matters with mind or self, we cannot use this objective apporach. As we own are the subjects of the experiment. Hence we have to use a different method. Mindfulness is the only way. Mindfulness is basically being aware of our awareness, and objective of this experiment is to understand truth of life. I have empasized on this objective in a previous article, as to why mindfulness is not about "living a healthy life" or "making optimal experience". As above reason 1 and reason 2 will cancel out any value in other objectives, and put them in the dust bin. I am sure atleast some of us are fully aware of the seriousness of the issues associated with life. If you are not, I suggest you to visit an elderly home, or a cancer hospital in your spare time, as real meaning is hidden if you are not living in a femine prone third world country.
With this objective in mind, with a little bit of wisdom provided by numerous teachers of the past and present, you can take a "journey" to understand the "journey". You will take wrong paths, and when we do we should not hesitate to turn back and start again from the begining or as I call it repeat the experiment. Countless times. And I am sure you will come to a destination one day. And do not be suprised if you find this destination is an empty one. As it is the same Socretes who uttered "Only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing".
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