Having done the dishes, I realised that there were a few containers left over that definitely didn't belong to my household. Realising they'd probably be at home with my ex, I tied my shoelaces so my feet could carry me the three hundred meters and back.

I must have walked that half-arc more than hundreds of times over the years, and met dozens of lifeforms down that path. Most survived the encounter because by default my gaze is not aimed at encountering other higher lifeforms, but rather at having my feet avoid the lower lifeforms whenever possible. Of course my scale prevents me from harming no one, simply because my eyesight cannot detect all forms of life that inhabit the concrete tiles beneath my feet.

Ants however exceed the resolution of my cones and rods that line my eyeballs, especially since they are mostly found near the cracks between the tiles. Snails are bigger, but in the dark before dawn, some of them met untimely deaths beneath my size twelves. Simply because my awareness of my surroundings was limited. But in essence, I feel no difference between their deaths, or say that of my rhyming grandfather, who handed me down his feeling for the language..

What is LIFE anyway? Is it defined by shape, intelligence, looks or anything else? Well, if it were looks, I'd doubt if I qualified, but fortunately it's not that! Intelligence might matter, but not in the way of its relation to brain size: I've watched a whole colony of ants skillfully and intelligently vacate a nursery, after my bumbling human actions took the roof off their cozy home. All I could do back then, was to watch in awe as the rescue plan was kicked into high gear. Now who were the intelligent ones back then, you reckon?

No, I've always considered LIFE to be a much broader concept than any of the encyclopedias gave it credit for. No doubt influenced by several sci fi novels that honed the concept, I just now figured out just how wide my definition actually is:

Put that way, what isn't life?

Love your Energy,

Dre'