Life is struggle, and for all things that breathe, life is drawing the next breath. Life is pain and things that kill the pain, pleasures that begin and end. Lovers are lost and found, and solitude is the state we must return to.

Life of course is about doing your job whatever that turns out to be, as best you can, collecting your pay, paying for what you take, and paying those who labor on your behalf. It is collecting on what you deliver, and delivering that which you have been paid for.

Life is defilement of the sacred followed by its rediscovery.

Life is what we grip, the face of a high cliff from which all must fall, yet we cling as long as we can. Or we just let go and fall, into realms of pills and powders, poppies and coca leaves, blades on flesh and down veins, we leave notes and explanations that we hope someone will comprehend.

Life is rage and fear, for the living thing that feels no fear, and cannot fight or flee doesn't last; it's life in the food chain, some say it's what we chose.

Yet monk and master sit in meditation, bringing no further rage and fear onto the field. They say it's a path, yet within this path there is pain too, as there are no distractions. "Just focus on the breath," say the master.

The evaporation of our time may seem rapid, yet the seconds turn to lifetimes when the dullness of the air in the room strangles, and the hunger for anything to escape that moment becomes impossible to ignore.

Life is our crimes against others, and sins against ourselves. Life is the punishment exacted by the institutions of man, and by the laws of physics, of "karma," of life itself for these offenses.

Days in prison cells pass too, and in those hours, living yet entombed the convict draws breath, his mind stretching across galaxies, no demands are made, and he is free.

Life is greeting the dawn with a ritual inhalation of deadly nicotine, followed by a blast of caffeine, and setting about the tasks one has chosen.

Life is almost dying too many times to count, and still being alive, defying the auguries of a Greek chorus of vultures that have followed you through the years, celebrating your impending death.

Life is standing middle finger extended, punk-rock spit on the sidewalk and into the face of a gray asphyxiation. It is rejection, and defiance of a human's life reduced to an insect's function, and it's the insect itself, with no choice but to function as its small nervous system dictates.

Buddha said that life is on fire. Life is fire, in fire, on fire, and all things that breathe will walk through these flames, out of one darkness and back into the next. In that darkness at the end, life will search again for the light and flames. Life will return, chained by its own will, to grasp, to cling, to live, to experience and burn.

Life is the tyranny of hot daylight and the soft healing of the Goddess's crown in the western sky. The portent of healing; hope to the working man as he pauses to draw a breath. For all things that breathe, life is breathing.

Learn more about this author, Dan Mage.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about What is life??
We want to hear your view. Write now!