by Dolores Moore

Created on: August 06, 2008

Life is what you have, what you are given to do with what you will. Will, free will, that is what drives your life, allows you to make choices, right or wrong. We may agree that our parents gave us life, biologically, then nurtured us, hopefullly, till we arrived at a stage where we have the ability to survive on our own, to make a life. And even, to use our intellectual skills to examine this question. So far, so good.

The concept of life holds a multitude of meanings; I bet if you asked 30 people what life meant to them, you would be given 30 different answers. These would be based on personal beliefs, experiences, background, upbringing and so forth. So my view of life is vastly different from yours, maybe, or even from Monty Python's "Meaning of Life." I am alive, I breathe, I think and reason, my body performs the automatic functions that keep me on this earth. But what about my actual existence, or yours?

Think of how many times you hear statements like these: "Get a life!" or "What a life!" or
"Life goes on," "That's life," "No life," "In the midst of life, we are in death." All these terms derive from accepted definitions of common usage, they are a matter of circumstances, semantics or belief systems. Depending on your current situation, your personality and your outlook, you will attribute subtle meanings to any or all such statements. Thus, how life is either explained in terms of quantity or quality, becomes an impossible task. All any individual can do is offer their own explanation, obviously influenced by those factors mentioned earlier, in order to arrive at any meaning of life.

Therefore, for the sake of advancing the discussion, all I can do is offer my own answer to this huge and multifaceted conundrum. Life is a gift. It is something I have that is often taken for granted. I believe that life will last forever, or at least, mine will. In more lucid moments, when I need to find my glasses, or my back hurts, or I can no longer drink lots of wine without the expectation of a death wish in the morning, I realize how foolish my concept of eternity really is. But then, if I am religious, I think it is wrong to worry about the erosion and eventual disintegration of the physical life form. The essential 'me,'
the life force, will live forever. Am I saying I have a soul? "We are stardust, we are golden."

During this physical era, life should mean taking joy where I can, overcoming sorrow when I can, doing good where possible and contributing to a better

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