What matters in life
I’m sure you’ve had a moment in life when you realized you existed. That you were a person, in a world with other persons, with moral and ethical implications for all of your actions. When you felt the unbearable heaviness of living.
For me that moment was when I came across this Greek bloke called Socrates.
Socrates was put on trial for being a rabblerouser of the greek youth, infecting them with ideas of independence and critical thinking. About dismissing the overbearing power of religious dogmas and relying on an inner voice, a soul.
He accepted the death penalty. To die by drinking poison. On the day of his death, his guards who were supposed to give him the poison tried to let him escape, but he declined. They tried to give him more time to live and he told them to do their duty diligently, to give him the poison. Socrates had so many opportunities to continue living. He could have agreed to whatever terms the Greek leaders put on him, he could have accepted exile and died peacefully in his sleep.
What can death take away from someone who knows what matters in life.
Since then, I’ve had a lot of things happen in life. I’ve been occupied by sadness, by happiness, by anger, by love. But tha thought is always there.
What would I care about so much that even death wouldn’t scare me away from it.