what
is LIFE? |
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Life
is not a science, we make it up as we go along.
Al
Hirschfeld |
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"What
is life" a youth asked his father who works as a butcher. He
answered "I do not know very many things about life. When I
was eighteen my father told me, son marry a beautiful girl, enjoy
family life, bring up children and let your sons and daughters also
marry and enjoy. I am doing those things ". " What is
life", a college student asked the teacher. The teacher answered,
"it is difficult to define life in one sentence. There are
different views about it. But we can say surely that life started
when the first microscopic unicellular being evolved into existence.
Afterwards life went on evolving into more and more complex multicellular
forms, big in size, like dogs and humans. We all should try to live
disciplined lives ".
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"
What is life" a person asked a priest. His reply
was, "my child, life is God's blessing. God creates it
and takes back it.
Live as God says". A student of philosophy asked a savant (or
guru), "what is life and how to live a good life"?
The wise man answered, "what is inherent in a
fresh, green leaf and what drives it to grow, when it is attached
to a branch, is life. What an yellow, old leaf loses when it dries
and falls to the ground, is life.
Living can be complex or simple depending on background situations.
But basically, one should live an INTEGRATED,
within oneself, and BALANCED
LIFE
with others and environment ". |
First
one is a common man's populist opinion. Second one is of an educated
teacher. Third is a spiritual or religious opinion based on beliefs
or traditions. Fourth is a wise person's wisdom, taking into account
different backgrounds of habitats, professions, faiths and cultures.
There are other valid and acceptable views about life. See here
a long list of quotations on life and living by writers, leaders,
scientists etc. with some comments by the author. |
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The
word ' life' is used by the four different persons with different
meanings or depths, due to their different perceptions
or ' views and ways'. (See a thick dictionary also for various
meanings). Life
can be defined as the inborn capacity to grow, maintain,
reproduce
and sustain till death.
All living beings exist to reproduce itself and to produce something
to enrich the environment or land where they live. Take the case
of a bird; it reproduces and produces manure for the land.
See an elephant; it reproduces and produces manure and food for
other beings. Similarly are cows, goats, camels etc. |
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How
the first living being as unicellular life(or some other way) originated
is still not precisely known. Scientifically seeing, life in its
innumerable forms from single celled bacteria to millions-celled
dogs and birds, evolved over billions of years. Humans evolved to
be at the top of the tree of evolution. Later over millenniums,
developed (evolved is the right word), language, writing and teaching,
leading to modern times and different groups of humans with various
life styles. |
Various
types of humans have different aspects of life
and living like, (1) natural or environmental, (2) familial, (3)
professional, (4) social and cultural and (5) political and
national. Giving environmental aspects or habitats priority,
one can see different types of people like, foresters(fully
natural life or GREEN LIFE),
tribals, villagers and urbanites (very much
artificial).
Groups like rich, poor, farmers, intelligentsia etc. form
depending upon backgrounds of wealth and profession. In big
cities one can see other types like, cosmopolitans, slum dwellers,
super rich etc. Now it is clear that various types of
people like tribals, urbanites etc. evolved due to the unavoidable
influences of environment, profession, culture
etc. |
I
wrote earlier that birds, elephants,cows, goats, camels etc.
live and produce something. Contrastingly, a huge part
of humanity is now busy with producing pollutants of different
types which poison the Earth and cause destructive changes
to the environment and atmosphere. (Climate change is perhaps
the most talked, discused and written about subject now). These
destructions are not worth mentioning on this page. See the
page GREEN
LIFE
for
some details and some solutions.
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