“The unexamined life is not worth living” (attributed to Socrates).

I guess I just naturally agree with this as much as the “thinking” chimp does. For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed examining, introspecting into my life and the world at large. And I believe that my thoughts are worth putting together on a personal blog.

I have been mulling about a variety of these ideas since 2002, but most of that is in bits and pieces and not yet organised. That’s raison d’être for this blog. The idea is to do it without inhibitions, and without concern for who might or might not be reading the blog.

Well, it would be good to have an audience really. But the idea is to record my Weltanschauung for posterity, with the purpose to being accessible to my kids, to the students who I have been in touch with, and to the many other who I have had wonderful interactions with, which in fact are the source of the many insights that I intend to record.

If you’re wondering what my “Weltanschauung” is then it’s a fascinating German word that means “a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group”. I first came across the work when reading Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled and have since been fascinated with how succinctly this word captures the idea of an individual’s world view, paradigms, philosophy. So despite the slightly unwieldy nature of the word, and despite the fact that I still have difficulty in getting the pronunciation right, I couldn’t find a better word than Weltanschauung as the title for this blog.

So yes, this blog is going to be about my views or philosophy about pretty much everything under the sun. But given my background and interests, you are more likely to read about education, leadership, religion, living, learning (which often & unfortunately is different from education) and whatever other topic that takes my fancy.

I hope to be able engage you with my profundity on this large range of topics (and no, it’s not the same thing as profanity). As you might have guessed by now, I love the intricacies of the English language and also that I am definitely not as humble or modest as I initially seemed to be. But more on that later.

For now, let’s just say, hello world!

-Vardan Kabra