"The unexamined life is not worth living" is a famous dictum uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth. Choosing death rather than exile, these final words deeply reflect Socrates' core values. It is a pronouncement that entails proactive introspection of what the meaning of life is. More importantly, it involves the thinking of what allows us to make our choices and decisions by reasoning them. Are we using logic to form our judgements? Or are we passively driven by ideas from others? It implies the autonomy of being the master of our fates and not being directed by the world. The statement is indeed the bedrock of philosophy, literally meaning the love of wisdom. To put it in another way, the love of wisdom is through self-examination and rational thoughts are what make us human and worth living.
I tend to disagree with that. Deploying rationality will also neglect the emotional part of us which defies logic but which simultaneously makes us authentic and vulnerable. Whether it is worth living or not is an individual and subjective choice, which in its own right is already a fundamentally proactive decision. The respect of one's personal decision, at a collective level, is what truly makes us alive as human beings and lives worth "living".
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