Whilst on trial for the charge of ‘corrupting the youth’, Socrates is said to have uttered the now-famous dictum, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. He was subsequently sentenced to death for that crime, a sentence he gladly accepted, taking it as an opportunity to deliver one final lesson. He did not know that his ‘Socratic method’ would inspire many great thinkers and become the bedrock of Western thought for millennia. He simply believed that rigorous examination and analysis was the best way to get the most out of life. He birthed the field of modern philosophy, and we should all be reaping the fruits of his labor.

When I tell people that I think we should all be philosophers, I’m often brushed off as someone who has no idea what he’s talking about. Philosophy is not some boring, esoteric subject for people who want to sit around and think instead of doing something productive and it’s certainly not out of reach to the layperson. I think to be a philosopher is to think in a certain way. To be a philosopher is to be someone who is constantly approaching everything both skeptically and analytically. It means not accepting anything religiously, but instead, thinking critically about everything. It means being better equipped to spot fallacious arguments, people with agendas, and the forces that seek to control us. It means having the tools to take full control of our lives.

Having a philosophical approach to life can do wonders for you, and I can attest to that. We can choose to be nothing more than passengers in our lives, going whichever way the wind blows, or we can step into the driver’s seat. We can allow social forces – our friends, families, the media – to shape our thoughts, values, and desires, or we can make these decisions ourselves. We can be of better service to our communities, and humanity at large. We can hopefully free ourselves of racist, xenophobic, tribal, and ethnocentric tendencies inherited from our ancestors that were borne out of nothing more than fear and ignorance. Only then can we take significant steps to break down the walls that divide us all.

Now, I’ve had people ask me if it’s all worth the fuss. Many people point out how paralyzing overthinking everything can be. They think we’re better off just acting, because knowing too much or too little can lead to indecision or making the ‘wrong’ decisions, and sometimes we discover harsh truths when we dig too deep. To that, I say, “face those harsh truths!”. To disregard our capacity for rational contemplation is to cast off that which makes us human – that which separates us from the wild beasts. Their behavior is governed by instinct and not by rationality.

It is understandably never easy to question conventional wisdom. It is much easier to take everything as it is presented to us. By doing so, we outsource thinking and, by extension, control of our lives, to someone else other than ourselves. Something about the way our mind works results in this inclination to trust the wisdom of those that came before, and while this may often be beneficial to us, we must note that all this wisdom came about as a result of someone questioning what they were taught, too.

So, no belief should be exempt. Challenge your every assumption, question everything, and take nothing for granted! Force even the most widely accepted ‘truths’ to justify themselves, and if they can’t, then throw them away. Be the author of your own life, and write a book that you would be proud to read. That, for me, would be a life worth living.