What is LIFE?

I think life is a span of time - the length of which varies from person to person.

Its meaning, allegorical or in reality and practically experienced varies (from person to person) dependent upon individual environmental, cultural and innate, genetic realities.

I look at my span of time as an opportunity. For me, any meaning in my life comes from me making the most of that opportunity- in whatever way is most rewarding to me in my individual experience of 'life'.

Life is a hassle.

A magazine, a boardgame, a cereal.

Attach saver and you have a delightful hard candy with a hole in the middle.

it's nasty, brutish, solitary, and short.... sometimes i like to add damp, cold and gray for emphasis.

That's a hell of an avatar, dag. Is that Andie MacDowell?

Dagmaraka, Hobbs was making the point that without The State life is nasty....
I prefer DrewDad's "zen" representation of "life" as whatever is at the moment of its representation: e.g., a magazine, a boardgame, a cereal, or--in my case right now: a computer and a group of friends.

JLN, I wouldn't quote Hobbes if I haven't read him...however almost nobody else seems to have been serious, neither was i.

gus, who is andie macdowell? now i'm not sure whether to thank you or to smack you upside your head. maybe both, just in case.

the 'zen' approach sounds alluring, though i'm not sure it's always possible. it isn't for me. life is never just 'here and now'...the 'here and now' is heavily shaped by what was and who i am. even if we're reading the same magazine at the same moment, or are reading the same post on the same thread on a2k, our reality at that moment will be entirely different. an entirely different 'life'... so to say that my life right now is a2k would be misleading or at least incomplete, it doesn't quite capture the differences between our realities...uhhhhh....or something...ya smell what i'm steppin in?
i do like 'living in the moment' if that's what is meant by it though... i am told i unnecessarily overcomplicate things a lot.

On the other hand, where else can one be but here and now? No effort is needed for that. It is the appreciation of this now that is what is crucial. Most of the time we are absent minded, wasting our Life, living it without appreciation.

You're right: here and now are shaped by "there" and "then." The NOTIONS of now (present) are given meaning by the notions of then (past and future), but the REALITY is that which we think of as "now." The same applies to the reality of "here."

i could not agree more about being invested in the present. we spend so much time not being present because we become self-indulgent, whether by dwelling in the past, or worrying about future while a perfectly awesome 'now' is right under our nose.

(even if the 'now' is not just a simple 'now'... nemmind)

From my readings of web articles, there is currently no agreed definition of a living thing ie., 'life'.

Existence is a slightly different matter!

The definition of what is 'alive' and what is not 'alive' currently eludes the best brains in existing and past humans. We really must just look to the future for an answer as we attempt to solve the problem.

But are problems just Human concepts?
By this I mean that problems may not really exist, they just seem to exist to us humans. This is a hard concept to imagine because 'problems' are ingrained into out thought processes.