Socrates: “Be as You Wish to Seem.”

A lovely, simple saying from Socrates: “Be as you wish to seem.” Simple and meaningful. But it isn’t easy for people to make this discovery.

Everyone says “I want to be a good person.” They say “I want to be respected”, or even “I want to be happy.” But how well do we actually know what these words mean?

This is exactly where Socrates’ saying gives us a starting point. Because when you ask yourself “how do I want to seem?”, you’ve taken the first step towards thinking about the questions that follow. For example, straight after saying “I want to be happy”, the next questions are: so how can I be happy? How can I achieve that?

Just as we need to do physical exercise to keep our bodies healthy, we also need exercises that we internalise to keep our souls healthy and to be happy.

Most people want to be something, but becoming anything isn’t a one-step process. It takes time, exercise and internalisation. Once you grasp what the thing you want to be actually means, you’ve taken the first step. Take this, for example: “I want to read a lot, observe and write novels.” That doesn’t mean “I should act like a writer” – doing that would be utterly ridiculous. :) If I don’t read even one book a year, if I don’t look at the places I visit and the people I meet with fresh eyes and really try to discover them, and if I don’t do writing exercises, I can’t become a good novelist. I need to read, travel, take notes, take photos and listen to people. We can think of each of these as an exercise. And of course, each of them will be part of a long process.

We all want to be happy, don’t we?

We all want to be happy, don’t we? So why do we usually tie happiness to big things? Why, for instance, do we wait for a holiday in order to be happy? Why do we wait for a stretch of time that lasts a few weeks a year at most in order to be happy, when we could take little trips every day that would make us happy? Doesn’t a morning walk, or a day trip to somewhere nearby, make me just as happy? Of course it does. So shouldn’t these “little” trips be what I focus on? What’s more, we can add the things we can do every day: drinking tea, listening to our favourite podcast, talking to the people we love, and plenty more besides. When you look at them, none of these seem like “big” things. But they’re the things that make us happy.

Of course, there are also things I can’t do every day, but try to do a few times a month when I get the chance. Spending the whole day out with my son and my wife, going to a Premier League match, having new experiences in England, and so on. When I manage to do and experience these things, I can see that I’m adding value to my idea of the ideal happy person. If I keep this process going and can make the little things that make me happy a permanent part of my life, it doesn’t seem that far off that I’ll eventually reach a happiness that’s hard to shake. What do you think?