With all due respect to Socrates, the unexamined life is not only worth leading, it's preferable.

I was reminded of the advisablity of the head-in-the-sand approach the other day, when ``The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say `I Do' '' (Jeremy P. Tarcher; Putnam, $10) arrived in the mail just as I was performing a few best-left-unexamined activities: eating M&Ms and shotgunning a Diet Coke while hunting for a Visa bill I thought I'd filed in the drawer where I also keep shoes, random bottles of moisturizer and a pingpong paddle someone gave me eight years ago, which I've never used but am hanging on to just in case.

I don't know if you've heard of ``The Hard Questions,'' but it's very popular. It spent nine weeks on the bestseller list, and the author has been on Oprah's show not once but twice.

Even so, I took a look through the book, with its thought-provoking questions about home and money and sex and spirituality, and though I agreed answering these questions will ``challenge and inspire couples to gain a deeper understanding of each other'' (that's what it says on the back), I also knew it wasn't for people like me. Which is to say, people who are smart enough to know that honestly answering the question ``Who cleans up after (the meals)?'' - with a response like, ``Uh, someone needs to clean up?'' - might not be your fastest route to the altar.

Actually, though the book is praised as ``innovative and exciting'' by no less an authority than Dr. Andrew Weil, I think it should be hidden from prospective spouses at all costs - even if it means stealing it from your intended should he happen to sneak off on his own to buy it.

Let's look at some of the questions and you'll see what I mean. Oh, here's one from the chapter on the home: ``What does our home look like, physically?''

The answer I would have given, had my husband (then boyfriend) asked, would have described a casual-yet-chic place with easy, breezy rooms and Park Avenue panache, all accomplished on a flea market budget, of course.

And it's not that I would have been lying, exactly, because that's what I want my home to look like. But who in his right mind would pop the question to a woman who answers ``What does our home look like?'' by saying, ``Like it's been ransacked by very thorough thieves,'' or ``As if a tornado with a grudge moved through the entire apartment, and then took a second swipe at the living room''?

The chapter on money calls for similar obfuscation, or, as I prefer to think of it, discretion. Consider Question No. 11: ``What kind of purchases must be jointly decided upon?''

I wouldn't have known how to answer that one, because many of my purchases are not ``decided upon'' in the traditional sense of the term. Sometimes a $190 pair of shoes, or $22 worth of self-tanner, just happens to a person. If you know what I mean.

I was in the middle of the chapter on friends, thinking about how some of My People - as my husband calls my friends - like to call often and on the early side, when I decided to call Cambridge author Susan Piver. She runs Padma Media, a publishing company that creates book packages for people interested in spirituality and wellness.

``The main thing I want to say,'' she began, ``is that everything comes up anyway. You're going to get caught. Do you want to be caught now, or later. You choose, and work with that.''

As a great philosopher might say, ``D'uh!'' Later, of course. After all, children and joint property provide disincentive to split up, and in my case - not to brag or anything - I've actually learned the joys of cleanliness.

Well, sort of. Now where is that Visa bill I was looking for?