Ego vs. Self-respect

Ego is a veil for weaknesses.
Self-respect is an armor of strength to fight forces trying to make one weak.

Socrates – the Joker of Athens

Socrates: A fascinating person; the man who was troubled by the fact that he knew nothing and still evokes so much interest amongst us after so many years. He continuously strived for finding the truth by not giving answers but posing questions and getting the answers from other people. His mother was a midwife, so his way of getting the truth out from people was by asking questions and challenging their mental faculties to make them realize the truth and not by giving sermons. His sense of wonderment at everything was like that of a child who is curious about everything in the world from day one. Most of these children like us slowly stop asking questions and take the world for granted and become indifferent. Some of these, rather a negligible lot become philosophers who never stop asking. Going by author Gaarder’s words, “A philosopher is someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it.”

How often we chose to evade the fact that we hardly know a lot of things we should rather start asking questions to. Life is so mysterious that we seem to get exhausted for asking any further questions. We’ve trouble finding answers to so many of them already that we reconcile ourselves with a sort of myth that we can’t answer them or probably we’ll get answers in due course of time. Most of us actually don’t take our lives too seriously. Our actions seem to be guided not by asking questions from ourselves but seeking answers from others who in turn have got them from someone else. It’s like passing the buck. We like to get answers from outside, not from within. We all like solutions and not questions. As again author Gaarder says, “Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.”