The following reply definitely is more pertinent here than Kash's thread... plus I am too lazy to rewrite anything else, anymore, on the same topic, two days in a row:
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Someone once said, "felicity is in prospering, not in having prospered"... Same is the case with life... Its meanings are hidden in its passing moments, not in a big, whole lump-sump of it.
Every time we try to come up with the answer to life, we are making a very fundamental mistake. Life is what comes as it is, and it should be lived as it comes (except for "donating" to your 401k, that's important, you always want to leave some money for your relatives when you die, they would remember you as one of their "rich uncles" )
We can use as many mataphors for life as we want, and every single one of them would be as fitting as any other ones. But I think the true rejoice in defining the life dwells in the very moment when you feel it.
Today was the day when I tried sushi for the first time. Today was the day, when on a sunny Sunday, my friend Martin pulled off my shirt forcibly in front of a super market and a few spectators since he was not wearing any shirt and I happen to be wearing an under-shirt and a collared one on top of it... and he could not go inside the super-market shirtless. Today was the day when I went inside a super market wearing my shorts and an under-shirt (guess what are the odds of that happening… again?) and when Martin, I, and Joemel came out of the super market, we were laughing our butts off on the whole thing. And then Martin said, "We have a life, don't we?" And yeah, that was true.
Last night I was in one of my intensive gloomy mood swings, and I defined life as a, well, you know what. Today, I had a great time and standing outside that super market, I defined life as wonderful... I was right at both times because that's how life seemed like on both occasions. And at both times, life rendered itself to me with the tint of its potential extremities... and that's exactly when the definitions of life came natural to me... and that's exactly when I want to feel it, with its fullest essence.
Sitting here now, in front of my computer and looking at the junk surrounding my computer desk and dinning table, I cannot possibly be justifying anyone of the definitions of life... as it is too normal, too usual, and too, well, unorganized.
All of the above rambling means that there is no "overall" or "definite" definition of life... When we have one of those dreams where you see your end, or realization of a fragile existence, and wake up with the fullest awareness of it, living through every single second of its post-dreamatic (is that a word?) effect, then, yeah, you can say life is a dream... or when life hits you hard with one of its cruel realities (denial of you adjustment of status application by immigration, for example) then you can term life as a reality.
So whatever definition of life you have, I would accept it as valid, as long as it was an aftermath of the very moment when you felt it.
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