An Unexamined Life

I had to push a friend into the acquaintance zone two years ago because he was always about it is what it is, what will happen will happen, what can come can come. I could go on and on, but he always just blindly accepted everything that came his way, and with the way such energy is contagious, I didn’t want to be part of his crew.

And as someone who truly knew him, I also knew there were a lot of things that weren’t what they were. There were a lot of incidents he could have avoided. There were so many things he could have worked on if he wasn’t blindly accepting anything in the name of all those things I’ve said above.

Most of us are like this guy, living unexamined lives. We don’t even put in any effort to find out why something happened. We don’t find out what went south for something to go north. We don’t do anything about issues that happen to us. We just either forget about it or take a different approach and then eventually come back to square one before we couldn’t sit down to assess our previous actions.

Personally, I am of the view that we can’t actually control most of the things that happen to us. We could find a way to make sure we get what we’re looking for, but there really is no assurance that we’ll get it. But what we can control is how we react towards what happens to us.

To be able to control how you react, you need to do a lot of evaluation. Self-evaluations. And no, it shouldn’t be a one-time thing but a repeated action. When you evaluate yourself, your lifestyle, and the people around you, you get to track what went wrong, when, and where. You also get to find out which friend helps you climb the ladder and which one pulls you down. You find out the beliefs or even morals of yours that aren’t helping you in any way.

And after getting your results, instead of just accepting anything that comes your way or just saying it is what it is to every situation, you know how to fight back and have an upper hand.

Sometimes I regret living an unexamined life when I was way younger. There are so many things I could have made right. There are goals I could have achieved. There are connections I could have been able to maintain if only I knew how to examine my actions and reflect on my path. Well, I do now, and I’m just happy about it.