What is Life?

What Is Life? (And Are We All Just Over­grown Pota­toes with Wi-Fi?)

Let’s start with the obvi­ous: you’re alive. Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged to exist for at least long enough to read this sen­tence, which, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, is more than can be said for the tril­lions of sperm that didn’t make it to the egg par­ty. But what does it mean to be alive? Is it the way your cof­fee goes cold just as you remem­ber it exists? The exis­ten­tial dread of real­iz­ing you’ll nev­er use that gym mem­ber­ship? Or is it some­thing deeper—like the fact that a sin­gle-celled organ­ism has more com­mon sense than most of human­i­ty dur­ing Black Fri­day sales?

Sci­ence, in its infi­nite wis­dom, defines life as some­thing that grows, repro­duces, responds to stim­uli, and main­tains home­osta­sis. In oth­er words, life is what hap­pens between your birth and the moment you real­ize you’ve been pro­nounc­ing ‘quinoa’ wrong your whole life. But let’s dig deep­er. Plants are alive, yet they don’t pan­ic about their car­bon foot­print. Bac­te­ria are alive, yet they don’t stress over their LinkedIn pro­files. Mean­while, humans—blessed with self-awareness—spend their days won­der­ing if they’re liv­ing their ‘best life’ while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Googling ‘how to fold a fit­ted sheet.’

Philoso­phers have spent mil­len­nia pon­der­ing life’s mean­ing, and the best answer they’ve come up with is, ‘It depends.’ Exis­ten­tial­ists say we cre­ate our own mean­ing, which is both lib­er­at­ing and terrifying—like being hand­ed a blank can­vas and a box of crayons, only to real­ize you’re col­or­blind. Reli­gions offer answers, but they’re about as uni­ver­sal­ly agreed upon as pineap­ple on piz­za. And sci­ence? Sci­ence just shrugs and says, ‘Here’s a brain scan. Good luck.’

So, what is life? It’s the absur­di­ty of being a sen­tient meat­bag hurtling through space on a rock, con­vinced that your cat’s judg­men­tal stare is a moral fail­ing on your part. It’s the qui­et tri­umph of keep­ing a house­plant alive for more than a month. It’s the real­iza­tion that, in the grand cos­mic scheme, your biggest achieve­ment might be remem­ber­ing to floss.

In the end, life is what hap­pens while you’re busy mak­ing oth­er plans—or for­get­ting where you put your keys. So take a deep breath, enjoy the chaos, and remem­ber: if noth­ing else, at least you’re not a pota­to. (Though, bio­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, the jury’s still out.)