Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, it was with this in mind that I took a magnifying glass and scalpel to my self this year, in an effort to explore and understand why parts of my very soul had grown stale. I delved into my projections, regressions, ego identifications, my complexes, my shadow and finally my ego’s Quisling readiness to be deceived, to believe what makes it comfortable to believe. It was harrowing work, alchemy, so much burnt away, sometimes I thought I was going to have a classic “nervous breakdown” and then, just as the night was darkest, I stumbled upon my self.

I found what Thoreau had stumbled across many years earlier, “…an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive more savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild no less than the good” Walden.

I observe how many of us lead lives of quiet desperation, how we can improve our homes without necessarily improving those who live within them. I refuse to live that life.

Things may be set in motion by forces greater than ourselves, but the choices are ours. The sum of those choices and their consequences which may ripple through generations to come, is the story of our lives.

Finding our story, the examination of how it has played out and the recognition of possibly another story which seeks to emerge through us is the evolution towards an examined life.

It takes courage and fortitude to encounter and interrogate the story that has sometimes grown over our true selves as we busy ourselves doing things we think are important. To cut through our numbness, the expectations of others, our fear, this takes awareness which always threatens to flee when the way is sharp and jagged. Stay on the path towards living in alignment with your true self. Nothing else will ever matter as much as this.