One thing I’ve found is that wisdom is wisdom and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Over the years, I’ve stumbled upon profound truths from every source you can imagine. Personally, I like the ones that add some wit to the wisdom and I once read a quote from Socrates that surprised me with his sense of humor. I never knew he had one.

          “By all means marry,” he said. “If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. And if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”

          I was impressed, so I dug into him a little deeper. Now, whenever I research something like this, I don’t get too into the historical details about the person, place and time. I’m much more interested in whatever truth I can find. And I can always tell when I find it because it always helps me grow into a better person in some way.  

          So, I read up on Socrates a little. A few thousand years ago, Greece had a very advanced culture, which, among many other things, had a strong dose of the snobbery and treachery that often shows up when sophisticated people compete with each other over money and status.

          But it also had a renowned line of philosophers that started with Socrates, went to Plato, and then to Aristotle. Socrates had a brilliant mind and he could have easily done quite well for himself by plying some more lucrative trade than philosophy. But he chose to forgo the bigger payday and instead, took the road less traveled, which ultimately turned out to be a pretty rocky one.

          He was hated by much of his society, had powerful enemies and was finally executed by the state. He wouldn’t become historically enshrined as the revered “Father of Western Philosophy” until many, many years after his death.

          Now, that’s not uncommon in human history. The genius of many a master has been ignored during life, only to become venerated after death. Look at Vincent Van Gogh. He created over 900 paintings, but lived in complete obscurity, often in dire poverty and he sold only one painting in his whole life. It was just a few months before he died and he made a whopping 78 bucks from it. Of course, today his paintings are considered masterpieces, often selling for over 15 million dollars, with the most expensive one going for close to 150 million.    

          It was the same type of thing with Socrates, but to top it all off for him, he was married with three kids and supposedly the family was always broke. His constantly struggling wife got pretty miserable with their lot, and according to legend, she made quite sure that he was well aware it.

          After I read some of this, his quote about getting married seemed a little deeper to me and I decided to keep an eye out for more insights from him. I later came across one of his lines of philosophical thought that really got me thinking. It had a few, short points to it and the first one had only two words – Know Thyself.

          Of course, this can mean different things to different people, but one interpretation is that he felt that it was critical for us to understand our own intelligence, which he divided into two parts.  There is our ordinary mind, which we basically use to navigate our way through life. It’s filled with our likes and dislikes, our hopes, dreams and fears, and all the millions of things we have stored in our brain that create the self-image of who we think we are.  

          And then we have something else. Socrates called it our Eudaemonic intelligence, which has been translated to mean the “Good Genius” of our awareness. This refers to the higher side of our consciousness, the altruistic home of the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln put it. We all know it’s there, but our culture assigns such little value to it, that we hardly even notice it. Instead, we keep our attention on our ordinary mind because that’s how we get what we want.  

          So, Socrates felt it was important to understand how the ordinary mind works as it makes its way through our everyday world of give and take. He pointed out that while it’s a true masterpiece of nature, a key element of it is that it’s always in a state of dissatisfaction, and this can be a real double-edged sword.

          On the one hand, it constantly pushes us onward to improve, which is a key to our advancement. But on the other, it’s also a never-ending source of desire within us. It always wants something, and even when it gets what it wants, it soon wants more or something better. It has a very powerful appetite and you can satisfy it for a little while, but this thing gets hungry fast.

          And its hunger is far more instinctual than rational, almost like a dog chasing a car, which when you think of it, makes absolutely no sense. For one thing, a dog can never catch a car. The fastest dog in the world, the greyhound, can run only 40 miles an hour, which most modern cars can double.  

          But the bigger absurdity with the chase is that even if the dog ever catches the car, what’s it going to do with it? Absolutely nothing. If it had chased a rabbit or a squirrel, it could eat it. But if it catches a car, it can’t do a thing with it and the pursuit instinct immediately disappears as the poor dog realizes that it has gained nothing at all.

          Once we understand this desire/pursuit aspect of the ordinary mind, Socrates says we should become aware of three different probabilities that we will often encounter as it continues to chase its desires. It’s kind of like mapping important landmarks in a territory before you take a trip.

          So, the first probability is that no matter who you are, you are going to want something with all your heart, but for some reason, you’re not going to get it. There’s going to be something that you really, really want and you’re just not going to be able to get it.  A lot of people take this personally, but it happens to everyone. Nobody’s exempt. It just comes with the territory. Maybe you’ve always wanted to have a partner, but you’ve spent your whole life alone. Maybe you’ve always wanted to have a child, but you were unable to conceive or adopt. Maybe you’ve always wanted financial security, yet you’re constantly broke. This kind of thing happens to all of us and it can be very painful.

          The second probability is that you’re going to get something and you’re soon going to realize that you really don’t want it, but now you’re stuck with it. At least for a while. And this can also be quite painful.  Now you have to spend your time dealing with something you really don’t want until you can figure out some way to change it. Of course, this can vary in degree from being kind of a nuisance all the way up to being a real tragedy.

          The list of examples of this kind of pain is too long to even consider. I once read a book on Eastern philosophy that claimed there are 8.400,000 different forms of human suffering in this life. I don’t know how they came up with that number. It seems like it’s probably in the ballpark, but the idea never did much for me. Some people glorify pain and teach that you have to suffer to grow, but I like to think there’s a happier way. Maybe I’m lazy, but I’ve never been a big fan of pain.

          Anyway, on top of these two probabilities, Socrates threw in a third one to consider.  He said that you are going to really, really want something and to your delight, you’re going to get it. And it’s going to be absolutely wonderful for you. Everything you hoped it would be and more. But then, you’re naturally going to want to keep it. And the truth is, you can’t keep anything in this life. No one can. That’s just the way it goes here. So, even if you do get what you want and it’s wonderful for you, ultimately, one way or another, you’re going to experience loss.

          So, the bottom line of Socrates’s probabilities of what you’re going to get by chasing your desires is, simply - pain, pain and loss. Now if that’s all there was to this great line of thought he came up with, I’d find it pretty depressing.

          But he wisely and happily added that there’s a far better way to get the most out of life, and the first step is to realize that you want more than just always wanting more. You want actual fulfillment. And here’s where he pointed to that old forgotten friend of ours, the Good Genius that we all have within our intelligence.

          Our Good Genius is quite a bit different from our ordinary mind. It has its own, intuitive understanding and at its essence, it already exists in a state of inner satisfaction. Filled with all the higher and nobler elements of nature, it seeks to satisfy our true needs, like peace of mind, contentment, love and joy, rather than just engaging in an endless pursuit of passing wants.  

          He says if we let it, it will steer our ship with wisdom and discrimination, keeping it on course to our higher destiny. And even when we hit some of the points of pain and loss, which we will, although we may still feel them, we’ll see them in a different light, as learning tools that can help us grow into our greater potential.

          Add finally, Socrates leaves us with a choice. He urges us to explore our own inner world, plumb the depths of wisdom that lie within us and emerge with the pearls of our own self-knowledge. He says we have a great potential that is far beyond what we know, but he reminds us that the choice to realize it remains up to us. We can always go the other route and just follow the herd, but he leaves us with a word of advice that has become a world-famous axiom. He ends by saying, “The unexplored life is not worth living.”   

           Well, I thought he wrapped the whole thing up with a bow and now, we’ve come to the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together again in the next one.