Descartes said "I think, therefore I am."
Now try to fill in the following blank:

"I am, therefore ____."

Not so easy. I wonder... if we were acutely self-aware at all times, what would we do with our lives?

I was at a party the other night. Just wrote a long paper about Greek philosophers that day, so I was more than ready for a little liquid reprieve from my own self-awareness.
But I couldn't help getting all Socratic on a couple of the guests. "What would you do," I asked them, "if you had an endless supply of money?"

In every single case, the person to whom I put that question had to think a while before they could offer any answer. Which struck me as rather odd. Why bother trying to make money at all if you don't know what you'd do if you had an endless amount of it?

The other funny thing was, the answers these people gave were things they could easily be doing now: reading, travelling. Basically, it all boiled down to the same thing: seeking knowledge.

But in a society so full of distractions, of entertainments, we lose the self-awareness that tells us all what is good, what is right, what is worth doing, what is worth knowing. There's the mortgage, the kids, the long hours at work, the favorite TV shows, the next big purchase that will finally make us happy.

Fucking bullshit. All of it. Knowledge is all that matters, and knowledge of the self is the best kind of knowledge. Descartes was just trying to make sure there WAS a self to know. The rest is up to us.
But how do we go about gaining self-knowledge?

Which brings me back to my original question, except now I want to be more specific. You're standing in the kitchen at a house party, minding your own business but having a generally good time, when suddenly this total stranger walks up and says, "If you were acutely self-aware at all times, what would you do with your life?"

Think about it. Fill in that blank.