Life as We Know it...

Life as we Know It…

Recently (and quite honestly a bit ironically) conversations have been revolving around this very thought that I keep having…”what exactly is life?” I can’t help but wonder what life really means to an individual.  I wonder if people feel as though they are truly their own entity or do they feel like they flow with this world in which we live.

Let’s start with my opinion.

To me, life is meant to be fluid. It is supposed to be dynamic…never meant for stagnation. It is never black or white…but many shades of gray. It represents the yin and the yang:  full of just as much good as there is bad. It is meant to be mysterious. It is also meant to be handled with great caution. It is a continuous choice…one right after the other. Day, by day, by day. Do you notice how my descriptive words of what life means to me are feelings…thoughts…ideas… but not things that are solid, true, conforming, and testable.  In my opinion… the majority of us don’t really know what life is…not really.

I say that because I am a scientist and every day we scientists study that very idea. We hypothesize about it. Then, we test those hypotheses in a lab... in a confined, mechanical, not to mention…white lab.  We wrap our heads around numbers, statistics, facts, evidence, and proofs.  To us, it is categorized by color, by physiology, by anatomy and most importantly by evolutionary fitness.

Scary isn’t it? Well, maybe for some, but for me? See… to me life is all of those things balled into one. It is psychological, it is physical, it is scientific, it is spiritual, it is full of choices…and damn, is it made for fun. So I encourage this thought to you... create your own world…your own, “Life as you know it”, and then pass it on.

Vi

There's this woman....and I love her. I've known her for over a decade and she has made an incredible impact on my life. Who is this woman, you ask? Haha... I have to laugh because there are so many ways I could describe her to you. Well, she's the one that wears the keys on her jeans. She's the one that wears cardigans every day. She's the one who makes you smile with a warm breaky or with a fresh baked batch of cookies. She's the one who asks what you have in your hands before you walk out the door. She's the one who tells of the secret lives of the ghosts that exist in her environment. She's the one that has been devoted to each and every one of us. She's the one who has made the best meals of your life.( literally you walk through the door and the smells of the evening meal consume you)  She's the one who always says "Ummm. hummm." to a question in a million different tones. ( which usually means a million different responses) She's the one who thinks a bat you have found may be a pesky squirrel she's been hunting for weeks. She's the one who can single-handedly make the best Thanksgiving dinner you've ever wanted... She's the heart of our family... and has been for years. This is a tribute to her.. to what she means to me, to my siblings, to my children, to my parents...and to quite frankly all who have ever known her.  She will always mean more to me than she may ever know. And her name? It's Vi...and I simply will always... love her.