Looking for Answers? Start Inside

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

-Socrates

Why examine?

We are human beings. We are alive for a short period of time. We spend a lot of time being dead: the period before we are born, and then after we stop being alive.

In the big scheme of things, a single human being is alive for barely the blink of an eye, considering the entire span of human existence.

So we should make that life count for something.

Who are we?

Philosophers have spent entire lifetimes examining this.

Are we just animals, responding to instincts and desires? To some extent, we are. If we did not respond to instincts, the species would not survive. Instincts warn us about threats to life and limb. They guided our forefathers to run at the sound of even a muffled, distant roar of a tiger.

Desire

Surely, responding to every desire cannot, or should not, be the guiding light of every life.

Desires are innumerable. They are also insatiable. You satisfy one desire, and another one immediately replaces it.

So there has to be more to life than just an attempt to satisfy every craving for pleasure.

Look inside yourself

That is where you will find some answers, if you look long enough, hard enough, and with complete honesty. Why is that?

Because we are hard-wired with an innate wisdom. It just gets submerged under layers of ignorance bred by trying to “succeed in the real world.”

What is the real world?

Most of the time, we see what we want to see. We project our desires, expectations, and, frustrations on the outside world, and then get upset when things do not go our way. The majority of the time, the problem is not with the world, but with the way we choose to view it.

We are not alone

The world does not exist only to suit our purposes. There are seven billion people on this planet. All of them have desires and expectations. Some of these are contradictory. It is not possible for all of them to be fulfilled.

What is success?

A misconception about the nature of success is one of the common reasons why people go through life feeling stressed out all the time.

This should be a prime area for introspection.

Does success to you mean earning lots of money? How much money? If you answer “a million dollars” today, you will probably upgrade it to two million in a few years as you get closer to your first goal.

Or does success mean earning more money than your friends? And if you do that, will it earn you respect, or just envy? If you see someone go past you in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, what feeling does that provoke in you? Is it respect?

Big house, corner office

The average American house today is much larger than that from few decades ago. But people are no happier. Some may say they are less happy.

So how big a house do you need? At what point will you say, “Enough! I have succeeded?”

When your house is the biggest in your block? In your city? In your state? See where this is headed?

To pay for your big house, you will need the corner office, the “CEO office.” How many compromises will you need to make to get there, and then to stay there?

Are you prepared to spend long periods of time away from your family to make all this happen? Some families do break up if one or both partners put their careers way ahead of their relationships.

It is not inherently bad to make money, have a nice car and a high-paying job. However, the costs and benefits must be considered carefully. Honest introspection is essential for this.

Ethics, anybody?

This is another area for honest introspection. What is right, and what is wrong? Do we need to depend on other people to teach us this? When we are children, we watch our parents, and other adults. Families and societies are laboratories. Children learn their sense of right and wrong by observation.

However, this can be misleading also. Many people “fudge” a little bit on their taxes. Little white lies are not uncommon. Human beings act based on their self-interest, and then try to justify their actions to themselves and to society, even when they have been cutting corners, if not worse.

Most adults, except for some psychopaths and some people with mental health issues, are able to tell right from wrong, in their heart of hearts.

Most ethical issues are not that difficult (some, obviously, are). Just look deep inside yourself, and ask yourself how you would feel if somebody did to you what you are planning to do. You will have your answer most of the time.

Ethics committees, lectures from experts… none of them are as powerful as your own honest introspection.

Is this what Socrates meant?

An unexamined life means cruising along on autopilot. It means just adopting the currently fashionable views on behavior, money, and success, without having a solid moral compass of your own to guide you.

That would deprive you of one of the true pleasures of being human: the ability to think rationally, critically, honestly, and ethically.

We can go deeper, though

This is the next level of introspection.

There is a storm of thoughts forever raging inside our minds.

These thoughts make us what we are. But they can sometimes control us.

The key of true success might well be the ability to go so deep within our own minds that we are able to control our own thoughts, even go beyond them.

This requires a deep desire to acquire wisdom (and not just knowledge), and find a lasting inner calmness and peace.

One of the methods of achieving this is through the process of deep breathing, and mindfulness meditation. If you focus just on the moment, enjoy and appreciate that sensation, and just let your thoughts flow in and out of your consciousness, you will have started on this path.

Is it easy?

No.

However, it is truly a tested path. It requires practice. You can start with just ten minutes a day, and then gradually keep increasing the time, till you can spend half-an-hour to an hour in meditation.

Introspection and meditation

It sounds like mysticism, but it is not.

Scientists have been studying the health benefits of meditation for quite some time now, and the results are promising.

So the choice is yours. Socrates made his views quite clear. What do you think?

Please write to me with your views, and we will discuss this further in subsequent posts.