Life is Something Shared

Using the previous perspectives I’ve written from, that humans are an expression of Earth and that what we create is an extension of ourselves, we are then equipped for a secret: life belongs to no one. Rather, it is ubiquitous throughout the animate forms of the natural. This allows us to consider a commonality that humans have with all living things. We are all in the pursuit of life. Through this lens, we can understand that life is first and foremost something shared. As life passes through us, we may recognize ourselves as a form in which life takes shape, whether it be through a human, fish, or flower; life comes to embody the form. However, life is not only granted by this force, but also dependent on what the form does to create meaning.

Before we delve deeper, it will be useful for us to know how life is defined. To offer perspective, I have chosen two definitions of “Life” offered by Merriam-Webster.

1. A principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings.

2. The sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the experience of an individual.

Let us start by evaluating the former. As a force, we understand that life is within us. It is the energy that resides within us and separates the living from the dead, the animate from the inanimate. By taking the latter definition, we might understand life to be a series of our experiences. Under this umbrella of experiences, we can separate two distinct categories: our application to life and life’s application to us. Much of life happens outside of our control, and those things do not define us. It is our responses to these things that do, and it is these responses that shape our lives. Life impacts us, and we impact life. We recognize now that our consciousness, our awareness of being, then has a relationship of impact on life.

It is through this relationship of impact that we can accept life to be fluid. That is passes through, unattached to time or space, but becomes confined to each through the form it takes. This fluidity defines its nature to be ever so present and shared by all. Taking place within all forms and outside of all forms, it is a concept constructed by the narrator of form and experienced by the narrator beyond their form. The internal and external are then converted into meaning as perceived by their narrator. Impact, however, also requires that one take part in their life. Without taking part, life is then perceived by the narrator as something that happens to them, rather than a relationship of give and take, of balance. When the narrator is active, they are contributing to life; they are defining it rather than being defined by it. For it is through our contributions to experience that creates the life internal, and likewise, it is our internal force, our taste for life, that creates the life external. The nature of life entices us to consider how each of our beings is a vessel through which life takes place, exists, both inside and outside.  

The vessel is the union of life and consciousness, creating a perspective, granting limitation, and designating the parameters for where life takes place. With the life internal and external established, we can break down the grey area between them, giving us the private and public life. Working from the inside out, we can layer them as follows: internal, private, public, and external life. The private life consists of our relationships, while the public life is our communities and society at large. Throughout each layer, life is shaped by the forms present in each. For instance, the private life may involve domesticated animals, farm animals, or house plants, and the external life encompasses the experiences an individual or collective has. Nonetheless, it is our vessel that grants limitations to life. However, due to its nature of impact, the life external will have an influence on perspective. Life creates and impacts itself. Yet it is through how the vessel perceives the influence that births perspective.

When we think conceptually about life, it is important to note that life is not synonymous with existence. There is much that exists that is not living. Most of which was brought through human creation. Nonetheless, a bird has its nest and a beaver its dam, and neither of these will negatively impact our shared lives like human pollution. Separating existence from life seems daunting because we often consider everything to be life. That everything exists within life. But the opposite is true. Life is present within existence. Again, we will return to definitions to examine existence.

1. The state or fact of having being especially independently of human consciousness and as contrasted with nonexistence.

2. Actual or present occurrence.

3. The totality of existent things: Reality as presented in experience

For this writing, I would like to work with what is offered of the third definition, “the totality of existent things,” and in particular, “reality as presented in experience.” This best helps us to understand the relation between “life” and “existence,” where life is understood as the animate, and existence is all-encompassing. What we create, that which is of us, joins existence. Broadly speaking, all of existence is shared. Life, however, is something more personal than existence, because it is shared more intimately.

To understand the intimacy of life, we may return to our vessel. How we care for our vessel, our body, and the boundaries we uphold to protect our private lives, determines our health. Movement facilitates health because our vessel demands that we move. When we physically move through space, we are bringing to union the external and the internal. One cannot choose the weather (external), but they can choose their activity (running, walking) for health (internal). Health is perhaps the most prevalent and obvious example of life passing through us. Life happens to us all, but it is whether we have equipped our vessels to handle it that determines life’s impact. Yet, life is also the force that drives us to move. To be full of life is to be prepared for what it hands you.

Through this understanding, the fluid nature of life, we can take away that it behaves this way through all that is animated, as all carry the force. So, when we choose to move, we impact our lives internally. Just the same, when we make any decision at all, to honk at the car that isn’t going, to smile at a passing stranger, we impact life externally. The force of life belongs to no one entity or person. It is intimately shared with all. One life is not separate from another’s, and each of us influences the force.  So, when we gather, we should remain conscious of the life we share. That when we are together, we are present together. The life external will demand and present a distraction to the shared life. It is then the decision of all gathered individuals not to allow their time to be divided by the external and to instead share in the life they are presently presented with.

To live is to give oneself to life. Being in the pursuit of life is not necessarily a conscious constant, but an unspoken agreement between all that share in the experience of living. And since not everything to exist will experience the living state, it is important that those who do take part in it. If one forgoes their opportunity at living, they have breached the sharing agreement. For it takes us all expressing our consciousness to have something to share in, and that is what keeps reality present. Without interacting with one another, the life around us ceases to exist. For life is something shared.