In Plato’s Apology (which is, in fact, not an essay or work with anything remotely close to an apology in it and is instead a defense of Socrates before his murder—because, yes, it was a murder, don’t @ me) there is a quote about the unexamined life not being worth much at all. IF Socrates, the actual speaker, is right, which I suspect he is, what does that mean? How do we examine our lives in a way that allows us to better ourselves and gain a sense of self-awareness without living in fear of everything we do?
By that I mean this: how do we find a balance between examining our lives to become better people and over-examining our lives to the point that we don’t do anything for fear of messing up?
This is a trend that I’ve seen more and more of in the past few years, the habit of thinking and rethinking and thinking and thinking and rethinking and thinking and thinking and rethinking and thinking and thinking and rethinking and thinking and—
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
But this has become all too common, I see jokes about staying up all night overthinking, jokes about worrying about saying the wrong thing and jokes about anxiety related to overthinking all the time across multiple social media platforms. All of these are, in a way, symptoms of over-thinking one’s life. There is a benefit to thinking about one’s life, obviously; that’s how we become better people.
But there is also a limit to how good this practice of self-review can be, and somehow, we have to find a balance.
Where do you think the line between over and under examined is?
