By GARY COX [from How To Be A Philosopher] – I ran into a friend the other day in town while buying socks in M&S. I don’t know how we got onto the subject so quickly amongst all that 100% cotton but she told me she knew three people with cancer who were not very old. She said it made her think about life and death and what it is all about. We discussed the importance of making the most of life while you still can and how some people fail to do so. If this wasn’t a philosophical conversation I don’t know what is. Admittedly, we each had our own shopping to do, places to go and people to see, so the conversation didn’t last long enough to penetrate the thoughts of the great philosophers on the subject of making the most of life while you still can, but it was at least an informal philosophical conversation that could have gone further and deeper, become more structured and formal, had there been more time and fewer distractions.

Philosophy pops up everywhere and the vast majority of people are philosophers pretty often. The strangeness of life, the inevitability of suffering and death, the peculiar fact that most people seem to remain quite cheerful and positive despite what they endure on a daily basis, are all grounds for philosophical reflection.

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