Socrates wasn't simply urging us to think about ourselves—he was suggesting that *passivity itself becomes a kind of death*, that we forfeit something essential when we move through the world on autopilot. The radical part is that he considered unexamined living literally not worth the time we spend on it, implying that quantity of years matters far less than the quality of attention we bring to them. When you catch yourself defaulting to someone else's answer about what you should want—whether that's the career your parents chose, the life your peers are living, or the version of success your industry defines—you feel the weight of his challenge: you're spending real days, real hours, on a script you never auditioned for. That discomfort is exactly where the worth begins.