Philosophy and Everyday Life

Philosophy is often imagined as something distant, abstract, reserved for old books. Yet, if you pay attention, it is right here in the way we decide what matters, in how we wrestle with doubts, in the choices we make when no one is watching. Philosophy is not an escape from everyday life; it is the deep current flowing underneath it. Every moment we ask ourselves What should I do? or Why does this matter? we are already practising philosophy, though without naming it so.

Life is full of confusion, repetition, and emotional storms. Sometimes the mind feels like a drainage system either water flows smoothly and cleanly, or it clogs up with stagnant thoughts until everything smells of decay. Anxiety, envy, hesitation, and self-indulgence pile up like debris. This is where philosophy touches the practical: it reminds us that thoughts are just thoughts, not chains. When you see that clearly, action becomes lighter, freer. You are no longer a prisoner of hesitation but a mover of life.

Meditation, self-reflection, clarity these are not spiritual luxuries but tools for survival. They bring the mind back to a sharp edge, like a blade cutting through the fog of confusion. They help us act in the present without being buried in past regrets or future fears. And in this clarity, philosophy stops being an idea and becomes a way of living.

Do You Think We Know? (The philosophy)

The question itself is unsettling: Do we really know, or do we simply think that we know?

On the surface, it feels harmless, almost playful, but beneath it lies a storm. Knowledge has always been presented to us as certainty books, teachers, traditions, and even our own past selves assure us that we know what we are doing. But if you pause and strip it all away, how much do we actually know? How much of our so-called “knowledge” is borrowed, memorized, or repeated without ever being understood?

Think about it. From childhood, we are taught facts, rules, stories of right and wrong. We memorize dates in history, formulas in mathematics, principles of religion, codes of society. But memorization is not knowledge. It is storage. To know is different it is to hold something not just in memory but in experience, to have it tested against the storms of life and the questions of the soul.

And yet, even here we face another paradox. Much of our thinking is not conscious at all. Modern psychology tells us that a large part of our choices, desires, and even values are shaped by unconscious patterns, emotional impulses, and biological instincts. We feel hungry before we decide what to eat. We feel fear before we analyze the risk. We fall in love before we rationalize compatibility. In other words, thought often comes after feeling it is not the driver, but the passenger who explains the journey after the car has already moved.

So what, then, is this thing we call knowledge?

Perhaps it is less about possession of truth and more about awareness of limits. True knowledge begins when we admit that our understanding is incomplete. Socrates was considered wise not because he had the answers, but because he declared: “I know that I do not know.” In that humility lies the courage to keep searching.

Think of memory. Without consciousness, we cannot remember. Without memory, there is no story of who we are. We rely on it like a fragile thread that ties yesterday to today. Yet memory deceives. It shifts, exaggerates, erases. What we “know” about our past is not the past itself, but the past reshaped by memory’s hand. If even our own story can betray us, how can we claim certainty about the larger truths of the universe?

Still, we do not live in despair. If truth is slippery, knowledge does not disappear it transforms. We can build knowledge the way a traveler builds a path: step by step, stone by stone, guided not by perfect maps but by curiosity and perseverance. We may never hold the full truth in our hands, but we can touch fragments, enough to illuminate the next step.

Look at how discoveries happen. A scientist spends years in doubt, failing experiment after experiment, until one day the pattern clicks. A poet struggles with blank pages, then a single metaphor opens a window into meaning. Even a child at a piano hits wrong notes again and again until, through repetition, something beautiful emerges. In all these cases, knowledge is not instant it is born from persistence and humility.

There is also the collective dimension. Alone, our knowing is fragile; together, it becomes stronger. No single human can understand all of life, but communities across generations carry wisdom forward. Culture, language, religion, science all are vessels of collective knowing, though none are complete. We inherit these vessels, question them, reshape them, and pass them on.

So when we ask, Do you think we know? the answer is both yes and no. Yes we know enough to live, to love, to build, to imagine. And no we do not know enough to claim final certainty. Our knowledge is provisional, fragile, yet beautiful.

And maybe that is the secret: not to cling to knowledge as possession, but to embrace it as journey. We are not knowers standing at the finish line; we are seekers walking through an endless landscape. The courage lies not in shouting “I know,” but in whispering “I do not know, yet I will keep searching.”

To live with this awareness is to live more lightly. It frees us from arrogance, but also from despair. Knowledge is not about conquest, but about relationship with doubt, with experience, with others. And in that dance between knowing and not knowing, existence itself becomes meaningful.