“The unexamined life is not worth living”

The unexamined life is not worth living due to the enormous freedom, the personal and spiritual growth and the privilege to find yourself that an examined life offers.
Life is the course of existence and the computation of experiences and actions that constitute an individual’s general condition in the universe. Due to this, to observe, investigate and evaluate your life is primordial in determining your path, to be aware of your destination and to fulfill self-actualization in order to achieve human excellence “aretê”. This knowledge is able to transform every single aspect of everyone’s life course from birth to death because as Socrates said “the person who truly knows justice becomes just, the person who knows truth becomes truthful, and the person who knows beauty becomes beautiful”. When we take time to reflect and examine in depth our life, the true essence and nature of what our purpose in life is and thus what our role in society is and the status that we occupy in the universe becomes clear and creates a feeling of belonging to this world and both mental and physical health.

In comparing an examined life and an unexamined life, deeper contemplation is required to comprehend the specific stages in the transition of a chronological life. The philosophical and sociological significance of these stages mark the way an individual’s life works and determines how that person is viewed by society and how they perceive their own self. First, examining our life gives us freedom to control our lives by revealing predictable patterns of behavior and their consequences and especially by enabling us to choose our orientation, raising the person’s propensity to success vastly. In the contrary, a person with an unexamined life is more susceptible and vulnerable to fail due to the lack of organization, awareness of situations and an adequate life plan. Even though absolutely every life is worth living due to the remarkable gift life expresses, an “unexamined life is not worth living” due to the fact that this kind of life brings suffering and as Buddha said “to live means inescapably to experience sorrow and dissatisfaction” and “life, when lived conventionally, can never be fully satisfying because of its inescapable change”.
Second, no one can escape suffering, but each person has the choice of how to respond to it. To analyze life deeply will assist any individual to have this freedom and will also help to develop the personal and spiritual grow that every human needs in order to be emotionally healthy. Although we don’t really have freedom because all our actions, behaviors, thoughts and even values are going to always be biased or influenced by primary and secondary biological needs, laws and restrictions in society and lastly religious beliefs, an adequate examined life will in fact permit us to predict somewhat our future and thus prepare us for the harsh suffering times that come along with life, by making us feel secure and to some extent confident and relax due to the maturity and spiritual growth that this self-inspection brings. Contrary to this, if you are living an unexamined life “you desire what you cannot have” and any kind of attachment will bring inevitable suffering thus making your life worthless.

 
Lastly, an examined life allows people to find themselves and an unexamined life creates a sentiment of low self-stem due to the feeling of no permanent identity. As a result of scrutinizing, analyzing and contemplating life, people get to grasp and describe their own identity and who they really are. To find your identity is the main key to live a desirable and successful life because when you discover yourself, the essence of what our purpose in life is and thus the meaning of our existence comes along. A purpose is the reason for the existence of something or someone and also the goal we want to attain in our lives and due to this the examination of stages are primordial. In my case, I’m currently experiencing transitional adulthood, a “period of extended youth to the life course” in which young adults experience an intermediary elapse between the psychological adolescence and the sociological adulthood of life. I’m living a half-dependent life where I can stand by myself in society as to when I can make my own decisions such as choosing my career and personal life, yet I’m still economically dependable as well as personally supported by my parents. Due to this knowledge, I’m able to plan my future and determine my path more accurately and according to my stage.   

                           
According to Socrates “an unexamined life is not worth living” because we all have blind spots even when we are examining ourselves. When you try to inspect your problems and unique situations, you’re looking at them from your point of view and perspective thus making the chances of a solution impossible. That’s why Socrates’ method of self-examination included an element known as “Socratic dialogue”, where dialoguing with people from your primary group such as family, close friends, or spiritual advisor will reveal those possible solutions that we cannot see on our own, making an examined life more valuable. Consequently, an unexamined life brings a great amount of consequences by taking wrong decisions and by not changing them when the opportunity to reverse them is available.

Most of the people are not living an examined life because they don’t believe they have a purpose in life. They believe life is just a game to be played and all their behaviors, thoughts and values revolve around their self-interest without predicting or thinking about the consequences. When the unknown purposes of our lives become available, they are easy to see and thus examination of life becomes completed and the unexamined life is harmed. Our society discourages self-awareness because according to what Shakespeare said, people are “merely players” who have “their exists and their entrances” in a stage. This stage is our life as we currently see it. We as society are captured in a crystal ball as actors of a life-long play with specific roles and examining our lives will help us to understand in a broader perspective the worth of our desirable and unique life. Due to this, the first step to live a life full of happiness and joy is to examine it and look for those goals that you want to achieve.