An Unexamined Life

Socrates wrote, "An unexamined life is not worth living". But what does he mean? Does he mean that one should simply go about one's life doing as one pleases without remorse or awareness of consequences? Meaninglessness and purposelessness account for all too many lives that I see daily. Today I drove out of town to testify at a certification hearing for a fifteen year old. The County Attorney called me as a witness.

As I entered the courtroom I see his sister, mother, father and brother. While I waited in the witness room, I had an opportunity to talk with two education people who have worked with this fifteen year old. The conversation rums the gamut as we all determine why we were asked to come. This young man has robbed a convenience store but ruthlessly shot the two clerks in the store. Amazingly he left the dollar bills - taking only the $5, $10, and $20 denomination of bills. Go figure. He also brazenly looks up at the camera when he does the robbery. I do not think that he examined his life. He looked nonplussed at the goings on around him today. His attorney was rabid in his defense.

It is everyone else's fault but his. He was not provided this or that when he was young. He had some affliction or the other. So...on the way to Duluth, I had the opportunity to call my mother. Someone new answered the phone and instead of giving the phone to my mother, I was passed off to my sister.

She was blitheful in her usual way. She asked how I was doing? I am always taken aback as this happens, and I exchanged a minor pleasantry and courtesy with her. I continue to be amazed that my sister, the mighty Ms POA, can be so blissfully ignorant of what she has said that I am and what she continues to do with and to my mother daily. Is the law so bereft of wrong and right that she can become so detached from her moral compass as to be ignorant of the destruction she wreaks? I can't imagine that the founders of this country would want the law to be applied in such a manner. Justice is about something different. It is about righting wrongs; it is about restoring the peace. It has to be equal for the common person as it is for the mighty partrician.

When Socrates wrote those words so many thousand years ago, he must have envisioned a time when there would be legions of people with unexamined lives. What must we do with those who fail to stop and take the time for contemplation; for consideration; for examination of the self?

On my journey home, I had the opportunity to listen to talk radio. There are so many divisive and pompous people who spout the most awful vitriol. When will we leave partisan politics and figure out how we as a people can all rise together? Again, I fear that there are many unexamined lives at stake. Rome, Ming, England, and now the States. We will fall. Then we will have time to examine our lives, our fates, our futures. Pray that we learn quickly from our own mistakes and that we can learn equally fast from the mistakes of those that came before us as well as those who follow us.

I think, therefore I am.