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Non-sentient organisms live, but they do not know life. Third, in the scientific definition, there is no place for life having value.
However, many would say that life has value in its own right — that it is not simply that we humans value life and so give it value, but that it has value intrinsically. Fourth, there is the question of life as a whole having a purpose or goal. This notion is not scientific, but one wonders if the tools of science are fit to detect any evolutionary purpose, if there is one.
Fifth, for the scientists, life is a set of biological conditions and processes. However, everywhere and always, people have conceived of a life after biological death, a life of spirit not necessarily dependent on the physical for existence.
The scientific definition of life is valid in its context, but otherwise I find it impoverished. I believe there is a hierarchy of living beings from the non-sentient, to the sentient, to humans, and perhaps up to God. I want to know what life is at its highest form. I believe life at its best is spirit: I listen enthralled to scientific debate on what, how, when and where life was created. However, questions remain which may never be resolved. In this vacuum, philosophers and religious thinkers have attempted to give meaning to life by suggesting goals: Plato suggested the acquisition of knowledge, Aristotle to practice virtue, and the Stoics, mental fortitude and self-control.
Perhaps the hypothesis upon which Ivan Tyrrell and Joe Griffin have based their therapy could help see Human Givens , They describe that we are born with evolved needs that seek satisfaction from our environment. These are physical and emotional needs, which, when enough of them are met, ensure the health of the individual, maximising his or her ability to achieve meaning in life.
Griffin and Tyrrell have proven empirically that when sufficient needs are met an individual will enjoy mental and physical health, unless there is damage or toxicity in the environment. Meaning becomes difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if these needs are insufficiently satisfied. Unfortunately, modern society seeks meaning to life through materialism, to the detriment of our biological needs, leading to dissatisfaction and a consequent inability to find meaning. The result is an exponential increase in mental ill-health. Sadly, then, many of us will not experience the satisfaction of a meaningful life journey.
Life is the eternal and unbroken flow of infinite rippling simultaneous events that by a fortuitous chain has led to this universe of elements we are all suspended in, that has somehow led to this present experience of sentient existence. Animal life excluding that of humans shows that life is a simple matter of being, by means of a modest routine of eating, sleeping and reproducing. Animals balance their days between these necessities, doing only what their bodies ask of them. The life of vegetation is not far from that of animals.
They eat and sleep and reproduce in their own way, for the same result. So life is a beautiful and naturally harmonious borrowing of energy. Yet we have taken it for granted. We have lost the power to simply be happy eating, sleeping, reproducing, believing we need a reason to be alive, a purpose and a goal to reach, so that on our deathbeds something we have been made to fear we can look back and tell ourselves we have done something with our lives.
Life has lost its purpose because we have tried to give it one. The truth is that we are no more significant than the sand by the sea or the clouds in the sky. No matter what your race, religion or gender, when you first step outside your door in the morning and feel the fresh air in your lungs and the morning sun on your face, you close your eyes and smile. In that moment you are feeling life as it should be.
No defining, no understanding, no thinking. Just that feeling of pure bliss. For that is what life is. Everyone has a story. Life cannot be planned: Failure can bring crushing disappointment, or you can try and make a new plan. But who wants to waste that much time regretting? Life has happy surprises, small moments to cherish. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
The first line expresses two of the three marks of existence as per Buddhist thinking, Anicca , impermanence, and Anatta , non-self: The stage metaphor in the second line represents boundaries or limits. Scientific research into the nature of life often focuses on the material, energetic, and temporal limitations within which life can exist.
The temporal limit of life is known as death. Now, this refers to the language-based, or code-based, nature of life. In five concise and poetic lines, Shakespeare defined life as an impermanent, non-self-directed, unsatisfactory, limited, ever-changing, and ultimately insignificant code. Life is the realisation of its own contingency. Life is thus a constant process of becoming, through creating values and meaning. Life is therefore perpetual transcendence, always moving into the future, creating the present. Life is also acceptance: Life is neither fixed nor absolute, it is ambiguous; life is the possibilities entailed by existence.
Life is the consciousness of humanity; it is perception of the world and the universe.
So life is sadness; life is death. Life is suffering and destruction. But life is also happiness; life is living. Life is joy and creativity. Life is finding a cause to survive, a reason not to die — not yet. It is youth and old age, with everything in between. Overall, life is beautiful — ugliness is fleeting.
Corpses and skeletons are lugubrious; living flesh is resplendent, all bodies are statuesque. Human life is love and hate, but it can only be life when we are with others.
Life as fear and hatred is not real life at all. For some, life is God. We would all then be His children. The second one starts when we realize we only have one. You get in life what you have the courage to ask for. People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box. Mellow doesn't always make for a good story, but it makes for a good life.
Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt and dance like no one is watching. When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us. There comes a time when you have to choose between turning the page and closing the book. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. Life is a progress, and not a station. To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. It is not the length of life, but depth of life.
Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.