I really like Ted Chiang's science fiction short story Exhalation. You can listen to a reading of it here, it's about 45 minutes. Don't be scared by the accent of the guy you hear at the start. The guy who actually reads the story has a wonderful voice for the part.
Science fiction (well, any fiction, but especially science fiction) can make us reexamine something by making us look at it from a different perspective. When you're trapped inside a culture or way of thinking, sometimes it helps to escape by asking what an outsider would think of it all. Science fiction has lots outsiders to ask those questions!
I probably shouldn't say much about the story, other than that it's somewhat related to the concept of consciousness, and that it asks about existence itself. Your mileage may vary, but I enjoyed it a lot.