Alive

What does it mean to be alive? We open our eyes, and here we are. We are given a set of rules from those around us and told to proceed loosely according to those rules. Everyone is playing by different rules and influenced by all the other rules they encounter, ultimately creating their own version of these rules which they call the Self. This Self seems so utterly different and estranged from all the other Selves. It is merely a reflection of all that it has encountered, combined with the biological happenstance of the vessel for which it inhabits; a statistically implausible eventuality of an unbroken line of cell division going back to the dawn of life itself, and indeed, to the beginning of anything that could be called matter and beyond. A connected web of every conceivable circumstance, personified into an ego looking around at all the other versions of itself. Feeling utterly disjointed from it all, and completely confused that it happens to be there at all. That, that is life.