Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Within the

university, students and professors scrutinize every possible aspect of our

universe-from the billions of galaxies to subatomic particles, electrons,

quarks-but they assiduously avoid examining their own lives. In the wider

world, we keep heretically busy and fill every free moment of our day with

some form of diversion-work, computers, television, movies, radio,

magazines, newspapers, sports, alcohol, drugs, parties. Perhaps we distract ourselves because looking at our lives confronts us with our lack of

meaning, our unhappiness, our loneliness-and with the difficulty, the

fragility, and the unbelievable brevity of life. Pascal may have been right

when he observed that “if our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it…the sole cause of our

unhappiness is that we do not know how to sit quietly in our room.” One of my Harvard students stated during a class discussion that “living a human life is a scary business.” Perhaps the reason we find it so difficult to sit

quietly and examine our lives is because doing so makes us anxious. But

until we examine our lives, we can do little to make them less unhappy and more fulfilling.

– Author Unknown