too examined life

We have been taught Socrates’ dictum: the unexamined life is not worth living. However, the too examined life is not worth living, either.

Hegel and Marx advocated historical self-consciousness; Freud introduced psychological self-consciousness; literary self-consciousness is prevalent in most contemporary fiction. We question everything. We seek for answers but in our pursuit, the only thing we find out is that there is no solace to be found in endless, vertiginous examination. By the time we finally get answers to our questions, we find out that there are more questions that do not have answers or do not even have to be asked. We get lost in a labyrinth of questions; we forget that things can be simple, too.

Beyond the why, why not, how, what might have been, what could have been and what should have been is a life worth living.