In 399 B.C.

Socrates faced trial for his death, accused of impiety and corrupting

the youth of Athens. During his trial Socrates gave one of the most important

statements of all time. He stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. 1 This

sentence was more than a simple statement, it was a challenge to the athenians as well

as to every one of us today. What does this challenge mean for us and why should we

accept this challenge? Socrates had also warned us against “Sleepwalking through life”

which when compared to his challenge can help us understand much of what Socrates

is asking us to do.

To understand Socrates' challenge we must break down what he is asking. First

we must ask ourselves, what is an examined life? The word examine can be defined as:

to inspect, scrutinize carefully, observe, test or investigate along with other definitions. 2

To examine a life is to observe it so that we can better understand it. We often catch

ourselves watching other people and animals and wanting to understand them. We

want to know what the reason is behind their actions, their behaviors and their lives.

However, observing and examining other people and creatures is simply not enough.

We must also examine ourselves. When we inspect our lives we take a look at each

individual aspect. We observe the small decisions we have made and currently make.

We investigate our reasoning and test our ideas with the ideas of others or even other

ideas of our own to better understand the root behind our very purpose.

The next part of Socrates's statement says “is not worth living”. To best

understand what he means we must ask ourselves, what is life? In his YouTube

channel, Richard Williams also known as the American rapper Prince EA, shared with
1 John Chaffee, The Philosopher’s Way: Fifth Edition, Page 77.
(City University of New York, 2016)
2 Dictionary.com, Examine
(https://www.dictionary.com/browse/examine, Accessed 25 February, 2020)
us his video “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives”.3 In Prince Ea’s video, he

describes life as a gift. He further explains that life is a dream. Not a dream you have

rather a dream that chooses you. This dream is an opportunity that chose to present

itself to you which you can decide to take or watch as it passes by. Living isn’t just about

breathing and your heart beating. It’s more than just walking around and arriving at the

next destination. Living is about acting and reacting to the dreams that surround you.

Taking those opportunities to learn, play, enjoy, opportunities to live.

So what does Socrates mean when he says that the unexamined life is not worth

living? Perhaps what he means is that if we do not observe the choices we make then

we will simply choose the path of least resistance and least reward. If we don’t test our

strengths and their limits then we will never know how far we can go. If we allow

ourselves to go unchecked then we will never see our full potential, we will never grow

and we may never learn to truly live.

Along with our talk of dreams, how does Socrates warning to stop “sleepwalking

through life” relate to his challenge to examine our lives? When we sleep walk we are

subconsciously making physical actions. We walk, eat, watch T.V. along with many

other things. When Socrates says to stop sleepwalking through life, he is warning us

that we are falling into a mindless pattern. That rather than thinking about our decisions

and actions, instead we wake up in the morning, eat just to eat some food, go to work

simply because we have to and at the end of the day come home, pay the bills and go

back to bed. Although the pattern isn’t the same as it was during the time of Socrates, it

is still as painfully dangerous. This pattern threatens to keep us from expressing

3Prince Ea, Everybody dies, but not everybody lives. (2020)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja-n5qUNRi8, 20th April 2016, Accessed 25th February 2020)
ourselves. From developing off our own potential to provide much more and to become

much more. Falling into this pattern of eat, sleep and work pushes us to go through

each of our days unnoticed, unchallenged and forgotten.

However, eat, sleep and work doesn’t always mean that we are sleepwalking

through our lives. Socrates challenged us to examine our eating and our working lives

rather than leaving them unchecked. Prince Ea had another video in his YouTube

channel called “STOP wasting your life”. In his video, he indirectly expands further on

Socrates challenge as well as Socrates warning. Prince Ea in his video talks to us about

how as he describes JAE also meaning Just About Everybody spends most of their

lives going to a boring job that they don’t like just to pay the bills. 4 In another YouTube

Video called “The time you have left (In JellyBeans)”, the video director puts out 28,835

JellyBeans to represent the average number of days in the average person's life. He

then begins to subtract the days out for each necessary then voluntary tasks of which

we do on average every day. Of the 28,835 days of our lives, we spend an equivalent of

3,202 lives working.5 Socrates as well as Prince Ea challenges us to make every one of

those 3,202 days meaningful. That we shouldn’t work the same boring job every day.

Rather we should work a job that makes us happy. One that utilizes our talents and our

joys while also challenging us to grow even more.

So what is an examined life? A life of Joy, Wonder, Awe, Excitement, Adventure,

Love and Experience. An examined life is one in which we take risks to do something

new, go out into the world and show everyone what we’re made of. An examined life is

a life of satisfaction as we become satisfied with the experiences that it brings us and
4 Prince Ea, Stop Wasting Your Life (2020)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2NDQOgGycg, 10th June 2019, Accessed 25th February 2020)
5 Zefrank1, The Time You Have (In JellyBeans)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOksW_NabEk, 21st June 2013, Accessed 25th February 2020)
the accomplishments we achieve regardless of the sorrows and trials that we can and

most likely are to face. Socrates asks and challenges us to do no more than enjoy life

and make something of it. We only get one chance at our lives and we should all make

the best of it.