I live in an area that’s surrounded by forest and yesterday after I went for a short jog I took a detour into the bush. Venturing into nature is one of my favourite pastimes. For me it is deeply restorative. Yesterday, I felt more alive as the sights, sounds and smells of the forest invaded my senses.
I have always found that nature is so full of life. I was hearing several birds calling, crickets chirping and the river bubbling over the rocks. I felt, heard and saw the breeze blowing through the trees and rustling the leaves and causing branches to sway. As I stood beneath the trees pondering that thought, a question rose like bubbles to the surface of my mind, “What is Life?”.
Science says that what distinguishes living creatures from inorganic matter is:
- Metabolism
- Growth
- Adapting to the environment
- Responding to stimuli
- Reproduction
While this is meant in a very physical sense, I began to look at it much more holistically. What does it mean for a human being to truly live.
Metabolism
We take in food and oxygen and produce waste and carbon dioxide. Other organisms depend on our waste for food and we depend on others for our food. It’s a wonderful symbiosis. But we are not only physical beings. How do we nourish our minds, our hearts, our spirit? And what do we give off to others? To live, is to be engaged in a symbiotic relationship with all of life where we give and receive in an endless rhythmic cycle. Life is an artful relationship with our world where we are both giver and receiver. If we only inhabit the role of the giver, we are already dead. If we are here only to receive, we are already dead.
Growth
We are constantly changing from the day we are born until the day we die. The inevitability of death is in fact another evidence that we are alive. Life is our continual addition to what we already know and believe. Every new experience should add to us and alter the whole. At the end of our life we should be like an old tree where every ring of its trunk tells a story. Evidences of storms and droughts and sunny days and times of plentiful rain are all written in its flesh. Our minds and hearts should be no different; constantly expanding with the providence supplied by each day of life. Life is leaving wiser and fuller than when you arrived. If we decide that we know it all already, we are already dead.
Adaptation
Our mindset has to adapt. We can’t stay stuck in the same songs from yesteryear and refuse to embrace the technology of today. We have to remain relevant. We have to learn new ways of thinking. New ways of being. New ways of expressing the variety of life. Life is about survival. If we do not change with the world we are already dead.
Responding
Inanimate objects do not respond to stimuli. Love.. no response. Hate.. no response. Our ability to relate to each other is perhaps one of the most intangible expressions of the joy of life. Everything is connected. There are trillions of interactions (stimuli and response) taking place on planet earth every second. Life is relationship. Cut off our minds and hearts from the rest of humanity and we are already dead.
Reproduction
We are hard-wired for sex. The primal urge to reproduce is powerful. Not only physically, there is also a deep human need to leave a piece of ourselves behind or to live on in some meaningful way. We somehow know that we are meant to have impact beyond the length of our days. We want to leave a mark on the world. To live is to leave a legacy that outlives your body. If we are not fulfilling the purpose for which we were born, we are already dead.
Choose to live!
Joyfully,
Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls