A Canvas for Self Examination
A proactive, examined life produces an intentional, purpose driven life.
Journaling has become more to me than just journaling. It's been a way for me to jot down my thoughts, emotions, and experiences, and having them written down gives me the opportunity to view them and understand them outside of myself. It gives me space to fully comprehend my inner state, then act accordingly.
Journaling has also been a way for me to work on myself. It gives me a space where I can write down my strengths and weaknesses, examine how they affect my day to day life, and find a way to work on and improve my weaknesses. It's provided me the opportunity to track habits, behaviors, and nuances I would normally not notice unless I was writing them down. It's allowed me to be more intentional about my life, since I take time out of my day to journal. And it's helped me build better relationships, because journaling allows me to know myself better, and to understand how I actually interact with the people around me.
According to dictionary.com, self examination is "the examination into one's own state, conduct, motives, etc." An examined life requires you to constantly look into your own personal life to understand the why behind every decision you make. But all of this is meaningless if you're not being proactive about what your examination actually reveals. Proactivity, broadly, means initiating change rather than simply reacting to events, a mental posture that shapes what comes next rather than just responding to what already happened. Examining your life without acting on what you find is incomplete. Examining your life and being proactive about it lets you not only understand yourself better, but actually work on the parts of your life that need to change.
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
— Plato, Apology, 38a
The Classicist's Companion is a hardcover blank journal, the first piece introduced into our library. I've journaled for most of my life, and I've always seen it as a way to track my behaviors, weaknesses, and strengths, and to use that record to build a better character and improve myself.
Socrates, well known for this exact phrase, spoke often about the importance of examining our lives, the people around us, and how things work. He believed the absence of a virtue in someone often came from a lack of knowledge and understanding of that virtue. Socrates held that we're all called to reflect on what we know, what we don't know, and what we believe, so that by evaluating our choices, we'd be better able to live intentional, purpose driven lives (utm.edu).
The Classicist's Companion exists for exactly this. A blank hardcover with nowhere to hide, no prompts to lean on, just the page and your own honest examination. If Socrates was right that the unexamined life isn't worth living, this is the space to start examining.
Citations
Dictionary.com. (n.d.-a). PROACTIVE definition & meaning. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/proactive
Dictionary.com. (n.d.-b). Self-examination definition & meaning. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/self-examination
Kraut, R. (2026, August 29). Socrates - philosopher, Athens, dialogues | Britannica. Life and personality of Socrates. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Socrates/Life-and-personality
Socrates (469—399 B.C.E.). Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. (n.d.). https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SSH2biii