I love thinking about the meaning of life But do I really? Sometimes philosophizing (including contemplating recent advances in understanding human cognition) seems to be a curse, and I think that I wish that I would just be able to quit thinking about all those "deep" questions and just live life. But do I really? The inner compulsion to philosophize is both a blessing and a curse. I am usually convinced that it enriches one's life. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. But how much time and energy should we spend examining life instead of living it? One of my favorite passages on this topic of ambivalence toward philosophizing was written by David Hume in Part IV, Book I, page 268 of A Treatise of Human Nature (the edition I am quoting is the Second Edition, edited by L. A. Shelby-Bigge (Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1978)).

But what have I here said, that reflections very refined and metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forebear retracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, into what condition shall I return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? And on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and began to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some application, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to the speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Hume follows up this passage by recognizing his need to philosophize to be both a natural inclination and a natural sentiment (page 271). He notes that staying away from his speculations makes him "uneasy" and that if he distracts himself with worldly diversions for too long "I feel I should be a loser in point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy." (Page 271). He expresses his humble hopes that he may "contribute a little to the advancement of knowledge." (Page 273). He had earlier in the book observed that a skeptic "still continues to be reason and believe, even though he asserts that he cannot defend his reason by reason." (Page 187). based on the above, it should not surprise one to hear that it was David Hume who concluded that: that “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” (Book II, Part I, Section III).