L-I-F-E

Life : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body. Ok...that's the dictionary defenition. Let's now ask ourselves .. rather, i've been asking myself for quite sometime now ... What is life?? Why do we live? What's it's purpose? What's the whole point, dammit???
People will immediately launch into all kinds of philosophical explanations the moment you ask this question on their face. Ah, philosophy ... anyone can speak philosophy, be philosophical. It's the easiest thing to do. No offence meant on the supposedly "great" philosophers, but still, i can't restrain myself from asking this questions .. Does philosophy really answer the questions most of us ask ourselves at one point or another in life??
Fine, we may provide ourselves with a momentary explanation as to what the purpose of our life is .. momentary in the sense related to whatever our main responsibility is, at that time ... Maybe a student in the 10th standard may say the purpose of his life is to study well and come up in life, or in more detail, to first pass his 10th boards. Ask a person who is about to get married, and he will say the main motive of his life is to remain committed to keeping his bride happy for life. Ok, i can go on giving such examples. In the same context, we can keep asking questions. Why should a person study? Why marriage? And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until ........... Why was the first human being born? Where did life originate from at all, and why? How was the earth created? What existed before the universe came into existence?
Chuck it. Back to...the purpose of life. I remember a cartoon i saw long back (Dexter's lab) wherein DD supposedly is the father of all things in possession of the page-long Purpose of life "formula" dexter craves for. Humouring. Just came to my mind.

L-I-F-E. Endless discussions will not provide a pathway to it's intricacies, neither will science breakthrough to give us a thorough understandable explanation of it's exact origin.
Science. Explains exactly, in bits and pieces, what happened after the supposed "Big Bang". But before that? A single concentrated point mass that concealed an unimaginable amount of enormous energy by virtue of it's again unimaginable density is supposed to have 'banged' itself to create the entire universe. Unconvincing, but imaginable. But where did all that energy come from? God?? Wow. There's the solution, some would say. Some maniacs would even say that God was the one who created the universe, every particle of it, big-bang or no big-bang. Angels and Demons says that this holds the key to the unification of religion and science.

I'm an agnostic. I believe in reality, not in the supernatural. That does'nt necessarily stop me from pondering over these questions. As some suppossedly 'great' person said, the mind has reached it's full maturity when it asks itself the question "What is the purpose of life?" (I came to know of this only after my own admirable matured brilliant (ahem...) mind came up aith the question, i'm not merely trying to prove that i'm matured, you see .. believe it or not). Again. Philosophy.

Let me end this post with a self-concocted philosophy of mine (you need not necessarily follow your own philosophy) : Always pray for the welfare of your fellow-beings, and welfare will come knocking on your door. As you might have realised, this has been expressed in different forms in different languages. No, I did not copy. That's the problem with philosophies. Whatever you create, it has always been created.