As children, we are taught to ask questions to better our understanding of a concept. As teenagers, we are pushed to evaluate our interests and figure out what we want to do after high school. Then, for many of us, college comes next, and we are encouraged to inspect our passion and pick a path of study to take.

I don’t think the push we received to appraise our choices, likes and interests came with hopes that one day we would be philosophers, but nonetheless, at just about every period in life, we are taught to stop, look and examine.

In his famous line: "A life without this sort of examination is not worth living,” Socrates suggests that our lives will only have significance if we strive to examine them and understand ourselves. This is an accurate statement since coming to know and understand ourselves is a key aspect of coming to know and understand our purpose and calling in life.

There is a certain amount of safety that comes with knowing. For many people, the unknown is a frightening notion. Most of the time when we are examining our lives, numerous questions are raised, many of which cannot be answered immediately or effortlessly. This leaves us in a period of questioning and uncertainty, causing us to think that our existential crisis is the only result of our efforts to examine our lives: just three weeks into Introduction to Philosophy I am wondering if the grass is even green.

Not knowing is a scary thing, but I believe that choosing to live in ignorance when we have the option to seek answers is an even scarier thing. And if examining our lives makes us all philosophers, then so be it because the unexamined life is not worth living.