September—a cusp of Autumn whispers echoes of new beginnings, sharpened pencils and untouched notebooks just waiting to be filled with dreams and lessons. As children reconnect with familiar, mentoring faces, we too can make our way back to the grand classroom that is life.

As the poets expressed, learning is a journey, not a destination. If we invoke the wisdom of Socrates, whose legacy teaches us that acknowledging we know nothing is the first step towards wisdom, we embark on an odyssey of the mind, through corridors of perpetual growth. From the unspoken teaching of a fleeting glance to the lessons hidden in nature’s seasonal articulations, everything has something to teach us. A mystical class on the art of being, we too can apply to this cosmic curriculum and make our way back to school.

Born in Athens around 469 BCE, Socrates was a stonemason by trade but a philosopher by calling. Although he never physically carved his ideas into stone, his disciples Plato and Xenophon’s writings offer glimpses into his life and teachings. Wandering the Athenian agora barefoot, Socrates taught us not through answers, but questions. He had the dangerous habit of transforming casual conversations into introspective examinations of life, questioning passerby’s preconceptions and biases up to the point of conflict and reject.

His unique perspectives open a door into a landscape of ideas that can, at their core, be rooted down to the art of questioning. His method, the Socratic method, involved asking a series of questions to help individuals arrive at fundamental truths, eliminating superfluous, shallow mis-knowings. His pursuit was less about acquiring or disseminating knowledge and more instead about cultivating an innate sense of wisdom, independent from external influences.