“The highest form of human excellence is to question yourself and others.”
By: Sachin Syal
Tags: Socrates, Society, Life, Thinking, Questioning

I know you’re reading this right now in your head but I want you to stop and just look around where ever you are and connect with your senses while taking some deep breaths. Now come back to reading. Think about it, why am I here? What is my purpose? How did I end up here? What is life? How did we create this world, or did we? Is God real? Are there aliens on other planets? How does the solar system work? What is true nature? Are we supposed to be living like this? Why am I asking these questions to myself? If you look back at all of these thoughts that you might have asked yourself, they’re all questions! In life, “the highest form of human excellence is to question yourself and others” according to a quote by Socrates, a Greek philosopher from Athens. I wholeheartedly agree with this quote but the question is, do you? Yes, you. Now, most people believe that the highest form of human excellence, in other words, “human qualities that make a person the best of one’s kind in any field of human activities” is grit.

Now, I also agree with that because grit “is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals” which is amazing. In addition, grit “is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles.” If humans can’t overcome and deal with their failures we can’t succeed. Now, in my opinion, you first need some sort of hardship or setback to succeed. Of course, you can be successful without it but it just makes you more driven. Let’s take a step back. What is success? What makes one successful? How does hardship help us, or does it? Look at this, we’re going back to questions. Grit is awesome but we need to ask ourselves questions before fully understanding it and executing. What are my goals? What am I even passionate about? How do I persevere when I face obstacles? Do I even have any obstacles? These questions we ask ourselves proves the point that “the highest form of human excellence is to question yourself and others.”

After we answer these questions we can reach the highest form of human excellence by executing. There is one more extremely important thing humans need to do in order to reach the highest form of human excellence. Simply, questioning others as stated in the quote by Socrates. Those two words “and others” means a lot, I mean a lot! If we just do whatever someone tells us to do, we never understand why we’re doing it. If you ask questions when others make you do things, you know why you’re doing it in the first place, if it’s the right thing to do or not, and how it can make you or break you. I don’t mean to become obnoxious and go around asking people questions all the time if they ask you to do simple tasks like holding the door open for them. I mean either asking yourself to question others or to directly ask them.

Lots of students in classrooms don’t want to ask their teachers questions because they fear embarrassment and bullying for asking questions. I know that this is a true issue as I’m a 14-year-old high school freshman. I ask lots of questions but some don’t because of this reason. People need to stop thinking that asking questions makes you look less smart or dumb, in fact, the smartest people ask the most questions to themselves and others. “Great leaders constantly ask questions and are well aware that they do not have all the answers. Intelligent questions stimulate, provoke, inform, and inspire.” Asking questions is a sign of intelligence and strength. It’s not a sign of uncertainty or weakness although unfortunately lots of people believe that.

During this pandemic, let’s all take a step back and truly question ourselves and others. Enjoy the holidays with friends and family, while still keeping everything in balance. We all have things to work on and literally no one is perfect. Just make today better than yesterday. Stay safe and let’s ask more questions to become better people in society.