Kirkepiscatoid

Today’s discussion revolves around Plato’s saying , “The unexamined life is not worth living.” She discusses how the ability to question things in our life is a form of fidelity.

Reflection questions:

1. What areas in your life need to be questioned and examined?

Hmmm...this is a hard question because I think I do a fairly good job generally of continually questioning and examining my life. But probably the main ones would be how feelings of “rejection and abandonment” can create delusions of what is happening around me that are not quite accurate. These delusions tend to make me overreact, and often are the trigger to my occasional moments of “volcanic anger.” This is a paradoxical emotion for me, because for the most part, I am fairly solitary, independent, and don’t need people around me all the time.

2. In what ways do you presently go about examining your life? What do you need to open yourself further to self-examination and growth? Do you have a truth teller, someone to help you examine your life? If not, could you find one?

Mostly, I examine my life by “sitting with it.” I try to objectively think about the issue and be real about what parts of me could be dragging it to a pathologic place. I pray about it. I bounce my thoughts off of trusted friends. But even your “trusted friends” are never 100% truth tellers for one simple reason...because they are your friends, they will never tell you something quite “point blank” because they simply don’t want to hurt you! They might come close. They might blurt it out in a moment of frustration and feel sorry about it afterwards. But truth telling is dangerous in a pure form to some degree; friends don’t want to totally risk their friendship. This might be why friends need to understand their covenants with each other, so they CAN get a little closer to being completely truthful.

Mostly, to open myself further, I need TIME. Don’t we all?

3. Meditate on the idea that questioning your life is a “dangerous process.” Do you agree? Why or why not?

It IS a “dangerous process” for several reasons. First of all, as I sort of brought up in the previous question, as the old adage goes, “The truth hurts sometimes.” Opening one’s self up to hurt is never fun. It sets you up to be sidetracked in your regrets, if you are not careful, and if you don’t let someone in there with you a little bit when your heart is open and raw. As a friend and I were talking about yesterday, “A little bit of self-pity is good, because it teaches you to let go. A lot, not so good.” We agreed part of the role of a trusted friend in this process was to “keep it real”.

The other “danger” is you, as a result of your self examination, may realize what you “knew to be as true” is no longer valid, and that you might have to rearrange your way of thinking about things. You may have to (gulp)...change. Now, I don’t mean “change” as in becoming a shiny, happy, cookie cutter Christian. You will still be “you”. But something changes...maybe very subtly at first, only recognizable through the “retrospectoscope”. But that involves the pain of letting go of “old truths”--things that were 110% valid at one part of your life, but not so much now. This process is painful, exposing, and can make you feel that “your past wasn’t quite right.” But it is part of the self-examination that has to happen if one ultimately “lives a life with no regrets.”