There’s an ancient Greek quote to live by that I’ve always strongly connected with. It was a simple command etched into stone on the side of one of their buildings. The command was simply to “Know Thyself.” When I first read about that quote, I didn’t really understand what it was saying. How can a person not know themselves, I wondered? But slowly, as I began to mature into a man, it started making sense. And then I came across another great quote, this one also attributed to the ancient Greeks, to Socrates himself, which cemented the idea in my mind. He said:
The unexamined life is not worth living
When I read that as a younger man, it really caused me to take a look at life in different terms. I began to realize that society has a plan and a course for each one of us. In today’s world, a person goes to college, gets a good job, spends the next 30 years of his life buying himself a place to sleep, has 2.5 children, and most likely gets a divorce. That is the simple path that modern society would have each of us aspire to. But I have always wanted something more than that. Once I read this quote from Socrates, I no longer simply wanted to blindly walk the path set out in front of me by the society of the day. And once I began to study and explore the different facets of life, I began to understand what it meant to know myself. And I came across another saying in the book of Proverbs in the Bible that echoes the words of Socrates:
The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways
Just on the surface of things, it seems like an almost foolish, silly idea to just sit around and think about life. Life is life. You just live it. And yet, there’s something more, something deeper to be found if each of us would just spend some time examining life and giving thought to our ways. In a recent book, an author David Straker describes how, becoming adults, before we really have much experience with the world, human beings are what he describes as unconsciously incompetent. We don’t really know how to do a whole lot, and what’s worse, we don’t even understand how much we really don’t know about life and the world around us. But as we progress, we transition from a state of unconscious incompetence, to a state conscious incompetence where we at last realize all the things we really don’t know. We finally sit down to really understand ourselves, to understand life and explore the things in life that are really worth doing. I think of another quote by Confucius:
To know that you don’t know what you don’t know, that is true wisdom
It’s interesting, before I spent time getting to know myself, I thought I had the world figured out. But as I sat down to really explore life, I realized just how much I was missing as a human being. I suppose that’s a good thing though. Humility is definitely a pathway to wisdom and to God. Maybe that’s the whole point.
7 Comments
oh, nice on the discount. will pop back this week as i would love to read one.
to know what we dont know…it leaves us to find those that do, knowing we cant know everything. nice post today man.
Hey Brian! Thanks for stopping by. And don’t worry about buying one. Just send me your address and I’d be more than happy to mail you one. I’d be honored to have you read one of my books. Hope all is well.
Bravo–this is really a great post. Thanks for sharing your insights on this. Your first quote has always been a favorite of mine. The second one about the unexamined life, and your explanation of it, is priceless.
Jodi!! Very good to see you. I hope your holidays were great. I’ve always really loved those two quotes as well. Written thousands of years ago, but still so powerful for today.
Oooh, I am loving this post, Ben! Reading it makes me feel really good about where I am in the world, and what I want to gain in this amazing opportunity called life. We get to build it in any way we choose, but most people build the same like you said. In honor of my brother David, who I pray survived the Haiti earthquake, I would like to share his story, as your post reminds me of him. He faced many challenges when he was released from prison many years ago. Our family was not always supportive, and perhaps simply not the best resource for him. He found his support in a church downstate where he made a new family. They took great care of him and gave him opportunities he would have never had otherwise. He completed his Bachelor’s degree, and became a minister and missionary, traveling to Africa and Haiti. He experienced the richness of new cultures and a lifestyle so unique it was hard to even understand as he described it. I guess what I am really trying to convey is had he simply conformed, he would never had lived the amazing life he has had. Thank you very much for sharing your wisdom!
Oh, and I want to add that my latest poem, Twenty Ten, echoes your sentiments.
Wow, your brother sounds like an amazing person with a really rich experience in life. I’ll pray for him as well that he made it through the earthquake. Thank you for telling his story, it sounds like he went through quite a lot of self-reflection and life examining.
A new poem! Excellent. I’ll be right over to check it out