Never could I have imagined that a book just short of 50 pages could intellectually liberate me and take me straight out of the doldrums. The apology of Socrates showed me beauty and innate importance of philosophy. It showed me the rigid individual rowing up the stream, whatever the cost Socrates never deviates from his just life. By now I have read it more than five times and it never ceased to pay dividends.
I never had the idea that life has an inherent or divine meaning nor do I believe in some sort of deity. Time was just passing and I was passing along with it. When Socrates confidently boasts to his fellow Athenians: “the unexamined life is not worth living”, I had – for the first time – the idea that some