Do you think a lot?
Or do you think too little?
It might be such that you often zone out without any warning and then people have to bring you out of it so that you can come back to the reality.
It also might be the case that you hate all those deep philosophical questions people throw each other’s way, and you are perfectly sorted out and don’t spend half of your day stuck in daydreams.
Regardless of which category you belong to, there are some things that need to be pondered over.
This are 10 deep philosophical questions—the questions to ask yourself for a more self-aware life.
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self
Benjamin Franklin
This post consists of a few philosophical questions about life I’ve come across in books or on the internet. Regardless of whose mind they’ve originated from, I think we all should try to answer these questions—because they’ll make us think a lot and we’ll probably end up finding things about ourselves that we didn’t know before. It might also prompt us to question more things. Including ourselves.
That’s what questions do—they make us question more.
So let’s begin.
1. What do you want your life to look like?
Pretty simple, yet people have to think a little before answering this truthfully and honestly.
What have you got planned for your future? How do you imagine the upcoming days and months and years to be like?
The monotony of a job? The satisfaction of family, of belongingness, of having a home? Your health?
In other words, when you die and see your whole life memories passing before your eyes, what do you want those memories to be? What are the great things happening in them?
Once you know the answer to this question, you have only one thing left to do.
Start working to make those future memories come true.
2. Would you rather be having this thought right now or would you rather have your peace?
Whenever a disturbing or anxious thought enters your mind, ask yourself straightaway—“Would I rather be worrying about this thing, or would I rather take shelter in peace?” Since almost all rational minds would want peace rather than disturbance, I think we should all be selfish and choose our peace too.
It’s the best way to cope.
3. Is this all a Dream?
Rene Descartes was an otherwise very boring philosopher, who asked a few interesting questions. One of his doubts was that all our moments were nothing but an illusory dream. He claimed that we have no proof whatsoever that whatever we experience in our life is not an elaborate dream. And honestly, if we do come to think about it, what proof do we have?
Not going any deeper than we should in this doubt, however, we may ask ourselves if we are actually living. Many people find very late in their lives that all their life they’ve been living theur life up until now half dreamily. They realise that they could’ve done more, thought more, observed more.
Ask yourself, not at all philosophically, if your life is, after all, a dream.
If it is, it’s time to wake up.
4. Are your thoughts your own (or are they fed to you by a malicious demon)?
This is another one of Descarte’s interesting doubts. He suggested, as the above mentioned question states, that we do not have any solid proof that our thoughts and ideas are not put into our mind by a deceptive and manipulative demon. This demon—as it is is claimed—resides within our mind.
If you have an evil demon sitting on one shoulder, try to find the kind angel on the other one. They must both be there. It’s only a matter of listening.
5. Do you want to be world’s best lover, known as the best or be world’s worst lover, known as the best?
I took this one out of a book I was reading, because I like it. It is one of those questions that make you know something about yourself that you’d probably never thought about before. It’s simple enough to understand in the beginning —What would you chose? To be the best and known as the worst, or to be the worst and known as the best?
But when you think more, you end up thinking a lot.
What would you actually chose? What could you chose?
For people to treat you with the love and respect that you don’t deserve? Or for you to love everyone else but not get that love back?
Would you chose to be loved but not deserve that love, and knowing it always deep down, or would you rather be deserve all the love in the world, but never get it?
Would you rather be known for something you are not, or would you be what you are without anyone else knowing the real you?
Both will hurt.
I say, both will hurt.
6. When you meet someone, how do you determine if you can trust them?
What signals do you pay attention to? Art those indicators usually right?
Has someone ever betrayed you? Like, badly? What do you feel towards them now—are you furious, full of rage, or just sad?
So this question made it to this list because of the value it holds in our life. Since at every point of this trajectory, we meet different kinds of people who have different intentions, I think we all should have a clear idea of who to trust.
And what better way to know this than to work towards this question of self-discovery. I’m sure you have your own signals in your mind which help you predict the outcome of trusting; like, if something feels wrong, the red signal goes on in your head, and you warn yourself beforehand.
We all need to have that defense mechanism. If you don’t, construct it.
7. What if this life is the paradise we were promised, and we are just squandering it?
Think about that again.
8. Will the sun rise tomorrow?
This is a favourite among philosophers and thinkers.
David Hume said that there is no guarantee at all that the sun will rise after the night. He said that there is nothing at all known as cause and effect. There is no necessary causal connection between any two events. One might say that A is preceeded by B or that B succeeds A, but never that A causes B. So we can never say that any event A causes another event B.
According to Hume, therefore, the sun may not rise tomorrow. I know, dozens of scientific facts and observation back this notion up. Even though there’s a very small, teeny-tiny chance of that actually happening, it’s still possible.
We think that there exists a casual connection between the night and sun next morning because of psychological necessity. Because all the years we’ve spent on earth, we’ve watched the sun rise everyday. Just because it has been observed that the sun rises after every night, and has been doing so since billions of years, we conclude that the same will happen the next day.
A newborn child, though, never knows what will come after the night.
The motive of all this discussion isn’t to create all this philosophical tension in the atmosphere, but to tell you the one thing we all need to listen.
Like the sun isn’t permanent, nothing else is permanent either.
9. Is there a specific thing you desire just for the heck of it?
No ulterior motive. No benefit. Nothing.
You just want it—there’s an obsession for it within you and you don’t even know where it came from. Just that you want this thing. Like, crave this thing.
My take—go after this thing, then.
It’s probably your soul speaking to you. It’s probably what you’ve deserved all along.
10. If you don’t love yourself, who will?
Self-explanatory.
Who knows, maybe these questions were the answers you were searching for all along.
Want more questions and philosophy like these to question your inner self and convince yourself to work towards discovery on a deeper level? Sign for the email list and get regular updates on my blog, as well as all those behind-the-scenes.
