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:
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.
Test Comment with link:
ReplyDeleteThe Endlessly Examined Life
A most chronic depression
GEORGE SCIALABBA
To be deleted.
Dec 5 2015
ReplyDeleteLike all good therapy sessions often the greatest insights come on the ride home. As I drove South out of Providence the following hit me..and I wished I had remembered it in class, so to add another dimension to our conversation.
As a therapist for 20 years I found the hardest thing we human being are faced with is challenge that comes with the real or perceived need for change in our lives. More often than not it causes all sorts of abhorrent behavior. One client of mine put on 100 pounds so she was no longer a sexual being therefore she couldn’t leave a terrible marriage for who else would have her? She literally buried herself in her fat, her self-made prison.
I could tell you 20 years of stories, of working with people to help them allow a sliver of change in their lives, but it is Chekov’s story that allowed me my Aha moment driving home. In the Lady with the Dog we meet two people who have been living lives of denial, constrained by social, moral obligations, living alternative lives filled with emotional deception and other aberrations that allow them to survive with the lie. Chekov offers them a chance meeting, offers us their struggles and allows them the strength to pursue the changes that promise authentic lives. Freedom for many is worth the struggle.
I am unsure if Chekov meant this piece to by “psychological” but we all read from our own experiences and at the end of the day I commend Dimitri and Anna for their bravery and wish them good luck in the pursuit. A good tale for “An Examined Life"