Beginning of isofia…
I’ve always thought it’s kind of funny that as a woman named Sofia I’ve spent most of my life searching to understand life – to find wisdom through different teachings and philosophies. What makes that funny is that the name ‘Sofia’ in Greek means ‘wisdom’, and philosophy itself is made up of philo (‘friend’) + sofia (‘wisdom’), making me a literal philosopher even if my musings don’t always stand up to academic scrutiny.
When I lived in the US for a few years in the early 2000s, I was surprised -and if I’m being honest- a bit offended that many people that I met did not know what Sofia meant. And that is, I think, what is wrong in the world. Not that people didn’t know what my name meant. That we all live inside of our assumptions about reality and get offended when other people don’t share the same assumptions.
Not only do we assume that what we think is accurate and true, we assume it’s what other people think (or at least should think), which is even crazier if you think about it. We trust our own eyes for discerning reality even though physicists and biologists point out that we only see around 1% of what is happening around us. So despite knowing that we’re missing out on 99% of the available data, we almost never question our thoughts or beliefs. We take everything we think for granted, blinding ourselves to the invisible 99% and filling in the blanks with our own thoughts.
(Quick question – given that I was born in Greece, do I like feta cheese?)
One of my favorite quotes from Socrates is this:
“I know one thing – I know nothing.”
How much differently would you live your life if you knew that to be true for you too – that you were both as ignorant and as wise as Socrates?
Well for starters, you would live with the excitement, energy, and pure unconditional love and curiosity of a baby. Because one of the main differences between you and a baby (apart from you being huge and them being little) is that they know one thing – that they don’t know anything. That’s why they get to live in a continuously fresh world where everything is magical and mysterious – a world of pure discovery waiting to happen. That’s why they are always so curious and eager to explore.
When did we start being more afraid of our life than curious? When did we go from being mostly happy (unless we were hungry, wet, or tired) to mostly dissatisfied and even bored with our lives?
My hope for this blog is that through sharing what I have learned through years of exploration and continue to see in the daily living of my life will ignite a spark in you – the spark of insight in the form of a new thought, a fresh idea, and the reconnection with your own living wisdom. Ultimately, my hope is that it helps you find your way back home to the place inside you where you are once again more curious than afraid.
In order to help you with that, I have one suggestion. Take some time to reflect on each blog after reading it. Maybe even come back to them multiple times, knowing that the only real point of reading the thoughts of others is to awaken your own wisdom – unleashing the ‘Sofia’ within. Otherwise, reading the thoughts and philosophies of others is somewhat useless, like eating only sugar and expecting it to fuel your body without making you fat. For anything to touch you deeply, it has to make the journey from your head down into your heart.
I invite you to join me on this journey – not just through my own thoughts and musings, but all the way home from head to heart – out of the intellect and into a deeper reality.
(And for the record, I love feta cheese… )
Let the adventure begin!
I, Sofia
