Philosophize on Your Navel

Did you know that today is World Thinking Day? I was incredibly excited about this until I learned that it was an initiative for Girl and Boy Scouts to help increase awareness and raise funds for a particular theme of concern.

Sorry... but that's BORING. 

Nothing against the Scouts and everything they do for youngsters, but if I look on my calendar and see that it's World Thinking Day, probably one of the last things I want to think about is child mortality or maternal health (themes for 2013-not to say that they're not important of course).

The FIRST thing I want to do is dress up as Socrates and roam around my city asking people thought provoking questions and maybe cornering a 12-year-old to prove that with proper questioning he or she can derive the pythagorean theorem.

Socrates is one of my favourite philosophers. How much thinking would YOU have to do to realize that every single thing you think you know, you're not SURE of, and so you can't really say that you know it, and then add to that all of the things that you definitely don't know at all until you come to the one concrete piece of knowledge that you can carry with you for the rest of your life:

You Know Nothing. 

Only a true genius can reach that conclusion and be perfectly alright with it ;)

After advising that we all know nothing, Socrates tells us where to start, with yourself: nosce te ipsum, "Know Thyself".  You can't truly experience life if you don't know who you are or if you rely on the opinions and thoughts of others more than your own (particularly important for nerds like me). So on World Thinking Day 2013, if you don't feel like contemplating child mortality or maternal health, I suggest you philosophize on your navel. 

Focus on yourself. Find your centre. Contemplate your inner life.

Because if you're empty on the inside, what's the point to even having an outside?

On that note, I'd like to leave you with the greatest representation of understanding the lack of knowledge that we all suffer from, Bill S. Preston Esquire, and Ted Theodore Logan.

What are you thinking about today? Share it in the comments :)

*Maria