The Examined Life

Socrates, the father of Western Philosophy was always in the pursuit of knowledge. One of his more popular quotes, “The unexamined life is not worth living” can be debated for hours on end. To my mind, it means a life which is not evaluated from time to time lacks room for improvement and growth, resulting in an aimless journey thus ultimately wasted on the person living such life. This is not a new phenomenon, even the prophet Jeremiah told the people of Israel, “Let us take a good look at the way we are living and reorder our lives under God”, Lamentations 3:40 The Message paraphrase.  Within recent times, Don Miguel Ruiz in his book The Four Agreements (and more recently, The Fifth Agreement with his son Don Jose Ruiz) gave us some pointers for evaluating our lives.

It is interesting to note that the premise of these books is to make agreements with ourselves; after all, we are responsible for nobody else but ourselves.  It is a practical way to ‘examine’ our lives and making the necessary adjustments. The agreements are:

·         Be impeccable with your word – speaking with integrity and saying only what you mean.

·         Don’t take anything personally – nothing others do is because of you.

·         Don’t make assumptions – finding the courage to ask questions and communicating your expectations.

·         Always be your best – under any circumstance, do your best (which will change from time to time i.e. sick or healthy, employed or unemployed etc.)

·         Be skeptical, but learn to listen – don’t believe yourself or anyone else by using your power of discernment to get at the truth.

If we take the time to examine our lives from time to time, I believe we can live authentic lives. I was just thinking . . .