The
unexamined life is not worth living.
~Socrates
To
the extent that any person has a genuine desire to know themselves and the
world they live in, each person has a duty to extrapolate from their own
experience the truth concerning the nature of reality, the meaning of life, and
the purpose of existence.
There
is no other source, it must be experiential, and it cannot be arrived at alone.
The
individual must take their own measure and judge for themselves who they are, their
nature, and the value of what they do in the world, of how they behave in
universe, how they act in relationship to every person living therein. They
must measure for themselves who they are in relation to the totality of what is.
That
is a lot to consider, do not get vertigo.
Take
things as they come.
Take
them one step at a time.
Be
mindful.
There
are limitations as to how much we can discover on our own…by ourselves, isolated
and alone.
We
face these limitations because we are not solitary creatures, we are relational
and our relationships are a vital component of who we are. They are constituent
elements of our being.
All
of our relationships, whether we characterize them as good or bad, whether we
are active participants in them, or are completely oblivious to them, those
relationships matter, both the near and far, in both time and space, the relationships
that are closest to us, as well as those beyond the possibility of knowing.
Together,
in the light of one-another we are able to examine our experience, check it,
and discover who we are, and thereby we are able to do more for the betterment
of the world, and ourselves.
When
we are in dialogue with one-another, listening to each other, the reflections
we need to make for the sake of self-awareness, reflection we need to make so that
we may understand who are, these reflections become clear.
When
we see ourselves reflected in the face of the other, then and only then are we able
to know the truth. Then and only then, with the veil of the ego removed, then
we are able to see who we truly are.
