I am a Life Philosopher

I see one of my most dominant characteristics to be the feeling of being a Life Philosopher, and that means that I am almost always thinking about things. The thought crossed my mind the other night that "I am a life philosopher, which means that I think about life so much that it can easily get in the way of living that life". The practice of meditation has recently (within the last year or so) been explored by me, and has presented me with a great challenge -- that of being able to consciously choose not to follow spontaneous thoughts when they occur. This is incredibly difficult for me, but I am continuing to explore it, because it seems important to me. It is rare for me not to want to take a step back from whatever I am doing and ponder about it -- about the intentions, the implications, the predecessor conditions and the possible results. I find I am constantly in a conflict of thinking versus doing, wandering back and forth between these two ends of a spectrum of behaviors.

There is a quote by Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living". To that I've always added my own: "The un-lived life is not worth examining". I had never seen that written by anyone else when I thought it, but I'm certainly not the only one to have turned it around that way (you can find it on bumper stickers). I just saw a quote by Mark Twain that is similar: "The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all". Mark Twain does have a lot of quotes that resonate with me!