There is quote to live by from ancient Greece that I’ve always really connected with. It was only two words long and was etched into the side of a building; the Oracle at Delphi to be exact. It simply told onlookers “Know Thyself.” When I first came upon that quote, it took me awhile to understand what exactly it was saying. How could a person not know themselves, it initially made me wonder? But as time passed, and as I continued to mature, the phrase made more and more sense. And then I came across something else, another ancient Greek quote to live by from Socrates, which fully explained the concept to me. Socrates 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 started to see that society has a plan and a course for each 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 a divorce. That seems to be the path that today’s society wants each of its citizens to aspire to. But I wanted something more than that. After I had read this quote from Socrates, I no longer had a desire to walk blindly along the path that society had set out in front of me. 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
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 at last sit down to understand who we are, and to comprehend life, exploring the things in life that are really worth attaining and doing. It makes me recall another quote to live by, this one from 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. And as I set my mind to really exploring this thing called life, I came to realize just how much I didn’t understand. I suppose that’s a good thing though. Humility is definitely a pathway to wisdom and to God. Maybe that’s the whole point in the end. Maybe the greatest wisdom is to just have a learning and teachable spirit and to be open to the idea that you don’t have it all together. I like that thought.
I hope you enjoyed another of my favorite quotes to live by from the ancient world. Socrates unexamined life is one of the foundations in my life. I hope you found it meaningful.
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