It is ironic how humans regard life with such little awe.

Life, as in, just you and me.

Whenever I think of life, there's a bunch of questions that pop up in my mind. They aren't anything spectacular, but they're just a bunch of Whys, Whats, and Whens.

What even is life?

A bunch of inorganic matter, sticking together, and forming a creature capable of moving around, capable of both thought, and reason?

That makes little sense to me.

Maybe, it is my own ignorance that causes me to quantify the definition of life. Is it possible that what defines life is larger than what we normally assume?

Everything that you, or I do is a result of a chemical reaction. Sometimes this chemical reaction happens in our brains, sometimes, its a localized body part reacting in a way to the external stimuli. A deer sees a tiger, and the first thing it does is run. Maybe there's some sort of a multidimensional mathematical function inside that deer, which outputs a run command when its eyes a tiger.

It is, as if the deer was programmed to run away.

Programming is something I find life to be strangely symmetrical with, at least the early, primordial single-celled lifeforms. Every single creature that lives today, is a product of its ancestor doing anything, and everything to survive. For single-celled organisms, the only things they were concerned about was probably food, and reproduction. Maybe, these organelles didn't even know what food was, all they did was touch anything, and everything until they found something they could digest, in turn, surviving longer than the ones which couldn't. This in turn would lead to them sort of encoding it into themselves, like some sort of a learning algorithm.

But, even inorganic matter seems to have some sort of an in-built programming. Sodium for instance, reacts with water to explode. Hydrogen burns with a pop sound. Oxygen makes the fires glow brighter. Every single element mankind knows about reacts in a certain away under specific conditions.

Now, imagine a mathematical function. These elements have fewer variables, and fewer outputs. What if adding them generates a larger mathematical function, with more variables, and even greater number of outputs?

I think that helps me in breaking down life, quantifying life.

Despite this seemingly hit-or-miss and unfocused approach, the net output was life on this planet. I am sure there were millions of other species which did not make it, but even if they failed, their demise paved the way for other species.

We live in a beautiful world, and it was built through the sacrifices of billions, and trillions.

There's a certain pride to be human, to be the only living being in this Universe so far, but looking at life through this lens, trying to quantify it, to break it down, takes away the novelty we associate with existence.

You, and I, our conception started with a single cell. A single cell exploding into millions and millions of cells to form an individual named Yatharth, or you, and every iteration of this cell multiplication is unique. Everyone's different, and everyone is unique. In a way, everyone is irreplaceable.

This is strangely analogous to how we picture the creation of the Universe.

It all started with a point in the infinite nothingness, all of the matter this Universe has ever seen, and will ever see, concentrated into a single point, and then one day, it exploded into infinite pieces, some similar, some dissimilar.

The analogy of Universe is poetic when you consider how the elements which compose you and I, were brewed in the hearts of the stars.

The entire journey of the matter which gave rise to us, this is something to wonder about. Even though the Universe is infinite, I don't think there are humans anywhere else other than Earth.

There never was, nor will there ever be you, me, or my Shubhangi, whom I held dear.

It is a strange feeling, that despite how infinite, and vast this Universe is, there only ever was one iteration of her. I was lucky to have spent a year with her, but unlucky that now, I have to live my life without her.

The Universe is close to 14 billion years old. You, and I, we'll probably live to around 70. If we're lucky, then maybe 80. That's a blip in the grand scheme of things. You weren't there to watch the birth of the universe, you weren't there to witness the Earth turn into a blue ball from the smoldering sphere it once was, neither were you there to watch the dinosaurs roam the Earth. It feels a bit sad to not be able to witness the perplexity of this Universe.

So, 14 billion years of not existing, only to fade back into obscurity again.

I like to think about life, but at the same time, all it does is present an unnerving fear, but I continue to think, in hopes of somehow unraveling what all of it means. I suppose it is like pulling a sweater apart by a single thread. It is destructive, it presents no benefits, all it does is destroy a perfectly well-made sweater, and at the end, all you are left is a single strand of wool, but it is fun, and you'll keep doing it, maybe if you unravel enough sweaters, you can probably understand how sweaters are knit. Maybe, if I keep thinking, all I will do is scare myself, but one day, I will figure something out.

This dread, probably forms one of the roots of spirituality.

When we associate such grand metaphors to our existence, we begin to consider ourselves special, but the laws of Universe do not discriminate, so we fabricate our own laws for this Universe, and hope that is how the world works. To reincarnate, or to achieve complete exclusion from this cycle of birth, we try to convince ourselves we are all meant for something greater.

It is a strange oxymoron, to be capable of thought when your existence does not impact anything. Every human is unique, but why make us unique when our lives are a speck to the universe? Maybe, the novelty of uniqueness is merely a human construct. To walk a path less traveled, or to travel in comfort of company, it doesn't really matter.

For us, all ants are nothing more than black dots scrambling about. Maybe, from a lens high above, we humans are nothing more than a bunch of dots moving around. Even this Universe has billions of stars, and all of them are nothing more than giant balls of burning gases.

Funnily enough though, when stars explode, they create nebula around themselves, and each nebula looks unique, even to an untrained human eye. Maybe, some things find their uniqueness only in death.

But why should we even cater to such thoughts, when none of them impact us in any meaningful way we know of? We like to think of a future beyond, but it is the present which affects you. Is there any point of such questions when the only tangible result is through thinking about what to do tomorrow, or the day after?

Maybe, there's some sort of a novelty in life, not because it is short, but because it is one of its kind, or maybe, we are all just mathematical functions that will pop up again, somewhere else.

When both sides of the argument are logical, then how do we even define what's right, or what's wrong? Maybe logic is overrated.

The Universe is infinite, and it will exist until infinity, I hope that maybe one day, we all will find ourselves here again.