What’s Life?

“Life is a journey from birth to death. The process is what counts for to be born is by chance and death is a must.”

Life lessons was the starting point in this journey of learning, unlearning and relearning. Unfortunately, as much as I try to understand life I get more clueless and lost in life. So over the last couple of days I went back to try define life afresh for which the starting point if you are in this era would be to google. In my search the two meanings that came to me were: “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death” and “the existence of an individual human being or animal.” From the first definition, there’s the aspect of all that happens before death therefore on all accounts then it means that life is before death. The second meaning brings an aspect of existence which in literal sense translates to “being.” To be is the sense of acknowledging ones existence and undergoing all processes that happen before death. With this then I note that existence happens after birth therefore we can deduce that life is all that exists between birth and death. Considering several things happen within this period we can consider it as a journey or process with a definite beginning and end i.e. birth and death.

The journey as we’ve settled on then I went further to comprehend the attributes of a journey and our outlook. Generally, humans are cautious being with a predisposition to self preservation thus we would wish to get to the destination safe. It therefore means that in the journey of life we intend to die safe hence our aversion to taking irrational risks depending on ones definition of risk. As a follow up I acknowledge that we generally don’t wish to die and this reminds me of a story my dad used to tell that if at any one point death would appear as a person chasing after individuals we would be surprised how even those we don’t consider athletic would surprise us. Probably this is the reason as to why humans came with the analogy of heaven and hell. What if these do not exist but are illusionary aspirations that man created in order to come to terms with death in the hope that they will live in another place? We’ll never know because nobody have ever come back from the dead and even those who claim to comprehend death have no experience or lack any scientific evidence behind their claims. This then means that we’ll never know whether our journey is limited in this world or there’s another phase. Whether there’s heaven or not. Whether there’s hell or not. What’s the relevance of this to you as a person?

From the above considerations and inferences, our lives are limited. However, with aspiration for a better life in heaven for which each has a mental picture of, could we get to live in that heaven when we have control and are aware of our experiences? I don’t believe in life after death which alludes to the fact that whether hell or heaven after I’m dead is a fallacy. I however believe that we all choose whether to live in heaven or hell while we are still alive and have control on how we lead our lives. With this the aspiration should be to manifest the greatness of heaven that we wish for in our daily lives, enjoying every moment, being kind to those we encounter in the journey and ensuring we live a worthy life rather than creating a hell we don’t wish to encounter post-humous even though we are not assured of it. My belief is simple, I either live in heaven or hell now which is under my control. You better make your choice as well and live it the best way possible for the next life isn’t assured just like you have no recollection of your life before birth. Enjoy the journey and make it count in every way possible.