Socrates

Hello there. My name is Socrates, and I lived a very, very long time ago in a beautiful, busy city called Athens. It was filled with amazing buildings and statues, but I was more interested in the people. Now, I wasn't what you would call handsome. I had a snub nose and big, curious eyes. But while my face was a bit funny, my brain was always buzzing with ideas. My father was a stonemason who carved incredible statues from big blocks of stone. My mother was a midwife, a special helper who helped babies be born. I liked to think I did a little of both their jobs. I didn't shape stone, but I helped people shape their thoughts to be clearer and stronger. And I didn't help babies be born, but I helped people give birth to brand new ideas.

I didn't have a regular job or an office. My office was the whole city of Athens. I loved to walk through the big, open marketplace, which we called the agora. People were always there, selling olives and pottery or just talking. I would walk right up to them and start a conversation. I didn't ask about the weather. I asked big questions. I would ask a soldier, 'What does it mean to be truly brave?'. Or I would ask a politician, 'What makes a good leader?'. I even asked my friends, 'What is a real friend?'. I never gave them the answers. That would be too easy. Instead, when they gave me an answer, I would just ask another question. 'But why do you think that?' I would say. It was like a fun puzzle for our minds. We were thinking together. I never wrote any of my ideas down. But my good friend Plato was always with me. He listened carefully and wrote everything down so we would never forget the important things we talked about.

Now, not everyone liked my questions. Some of the important people in Athens thought I was causing trouble. They said, 'Socrates, you are making people question everything.'. They told me to stop, but I couldn't. I believed that thinking and asking questions was the most important thing a person could do. It's how we learn and become better people. The leaders put me on trial. They decided that my punishment for asking too many questions was that I had to drink a poison called hemlock. My friends were so sad and cried. But I told them not to worry. I wasn't scared. I knew that even though my body would be gone, my ideas would live on through them and through Plato's writing. And they did. That's my story, and it shows why it is so important to always be curious and to be brave enough to think for yourself.