ashitaka katana

what is "life"?

a very important question... to which very few of us try even to give an answer! we, as human beings, should... a least try, to find out what life really is! and i think there isn't a person which considers itself a little rational, which hasn't tried to give an explication to the mystery of our existence!

i will try to answer, before giving you my own answer, with something from my sweet past: memories connected with two of my dearest friends who happened to be thinkers as well!
first i am going to quote my best friend bogdan - diabolik - who thought that life is like a path which you wonder upon, in the search of, what he thought it was the end of the road: nirvana! he was a buddist , you see!
i asked him to be more specific about his idea of life to expend his image, his projection of what it is! he told me: "florin, it's simple! life is a road which you walk on... you are looking franticly a crossroad! when you see one, and approach it, it is up to you to pick which branch of the road to take! you have three choices. either you choose to go straight, just forward, he told me, but this wont guarantee you that you will evolve in life, this way might not bring you closer to nirvana- the interrupting of reincarnation, when someone has nothing more to gather from a new life... or, you can choose a different path then the straight one, take either left or right branches of the road, thus you can learn more in your one life as a one being" . "but... it's not enough, he would later add... it is not enough just to choose on side of the road to other. that wont give you the assurance that you will learn something on that path....it all depends on your will, to learn, to be better and so on!" yes, yes! i told him "but when do you die in this story, about life!?" "you die when you get tired of walking and then stop and just stand there in the middle of the crossroad not knowing which way to go next! then! you are dead!"
i miss my friend! he was very spiritual, even though, just like me, he didn't believed in a single god!
second.
cristina had this ideea that life it is just a void, a biological void, she thought that life is a miracle of nature and physics! after one dies, that person vanishes turning to a dust of atoms! she was a thinker you see, very smart girl... and i loved her and broke her heart too!

i think that life is a state of dream... ok! my perspective is a bit more romantic or fantastical then that of others! but i gave it a lot of thought before jumping to this conclusion!
i think our lives are indeed the dreams of others, that we are nothing more then "movie stories" projected in someones head, while they are sleeping! and those ones are the projection of someone else's dreams and the chain can goon to eternity! thus i think life is nothing more then a strange fictional dream! something like in matrix, where you can never judge the thin border between what is real and what is not!
this is what i think!
if you have an answer which you want to share with me i will be glad to know what do you think! i am not going to laugh, i promise :P
22.07.2009 florin

Fallen sick on a journey,
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor.

Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694).
haiku's legendary poet... ignoring the death, he was still thinking of traveling!
i wish i could be more like him, i feel sometimes that i really want to be free and go anywhere, to see new things, to meet new people... to bad i cannot be just like o-sensei!