The Examined Life Discussion Group

The Examined Life discussion group at the Providence Athenaeum explores how literature relates to life. The monthly meetings consider readings selected from a variety of literary classics, including novels, short stories, plays, poems, and essays. In each session, we first analyze the reading and then evaluate the reading’s relevance to our lives today. 

The conversations probe big questions: What makes a life meaningful? Why are we here? Where are we going and how can we get there? What insights can we derive from the perspectives and voices of canonical authors? Great literature makes visible what we may not apprehend in our own lives and shows us how we are connected in more ways than we have realized. 

The Examined Life Discussion Group is curated and led by Robert Allio, an Athenaeum member with a continuing interest in the humanities. We draw our inspiration from Socrates:

I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue...and that the life that is unexamined is not worth living.

The Dalai Lama shares wisdom on the meaning of life

Sometimes it's not so hard to comprehend...

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/dalai_lama_at_a_santa_fe_ski_resort_tells_waitress_the_meaning_of_life.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

post Nostalgia and Swimmer aphorisms

• The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten…

• The past is interesting only if you have a rich present.

• And suddenly you’ve got this huge new territory inside you, which is the past—which wasn’t there before.  A new source of strength…

More on Hemingway--from Liesl Schillinger

Hemingway’s sensibility struck my teenage self as inarticulate and sexist.

                  The first time I encountered a reputedly great novel that I could not stand was in my senior year of high school. My A.P. English teacher had assigned “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Ernest Hemingway, and as I read it, I felt boredom, then anger, then incredulity. The main characters — the macho Robert Jordan; his compliant love interest, Maria; and his friend, the “ugly” virago Pilar — seemed to have been slapped like paper dolls against the background of the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway’s sensibility struck my teenage self as inarticulate and sexist. Stunned that this book and its author had earned such acclaim, I went to the library to hunt for clues to Hemingway’s psyche, hoping to understand his motivations, if not his fame.

Pablo Neruda

You start dying slowly      

You start dying slowly

 if you do not travel,

if you do not read,

If you do not listen to the sounds of life,

 If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly

When you kill your self-esteem;

When you do not let others help you.

 You start dying slowly

 If you become a slave of your habits,

Walking everyday on the same paths…

 If you do not change your routine,

If you do not wear different colours

Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

 You start dying slowly

If you avoid to feel passion

And their turbulent emotions;

Those which make your eyes glisten

 And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly

If you do not change your life

 when you are not satisfied with your job,

 or with your love,

If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,

 If you do not go after a dream,

If you do not allow yourself, At least once in your lifetime,

To run away from sensible advice…

It's never too late

An 89-year-old guitar maker is proof that age isn't a barrier when it comes to self discovery.                

               Watch this:
               http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/421509/the-joy-of-a-never-ending-search-for-hobbies/

Life as a penal colony, according to Schopenhauer's gloomy outlook

On the Sufferings of the World

 Unless suffering  is the direct and immediate object of

life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd

to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds

everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities

inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose

at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate

misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something

exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by

most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative

in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes

its own existence felt. Leibnitz  is particularly concerned

to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his

position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.[1]  It is

the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and

satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state

of pain brought to an end.

This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to

be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very

much more painful.

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the

pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the

two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement

is true, let him compare the respective feelings of

two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any

kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still

worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation

open to every one. But what an awful fate this means

for mankind as a whole!

We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under

the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then

another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we

are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have presently in

store for us--sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or

reason.