Christian Living

---

What’s Life?
©
by

Stephen A. Peterson


It’s the 21st century! Yeah! So what! Even though the 21st century is now in full bloom, I am confused and perplexed by people who talk about “life”. Americans, it is said by both Americans and non-Americans that Americans do not know how to live. However, the French—ah, the French—or the British, or Japanese, or the Italians, when I ask them what they mean by life, they do not help me either. In their wisdom as older advanced societies did not offer me one piece of new information in my desire to learn the definition of life.

So what dies it mean to be alive and to live these days? What do social liberals mean when they promise a new order of life on planet earth? They cannot mean a new quality of life never before enjoyed by anyone, but rather, it seems, an extension of vitality for the large masses of humans in those qualities of “life” which have heretofore been enjoyed only by a few individuals normally, or by large numbers of individuals rarely.

What is it is to be enjoyed and how is it to be shared more extensively? What if any human becomes dissatisfied or disagrees with what qualifies for life’s satisfiers? Are we able to hold human life to a point for a time while we absolutely determine what satisfies each and every living human?

What, concretely, is this “awareness”, this “well-being”, “life”, “happiness”? I would, respectfully, like to explain in a personal way what I have found in my half century of existence. I want to explain life in terms of my own experience, for in matters of this nature about the only source of empirical data regarding life is oneself. For I have learned even though I have asked hundreds of people the meaning of life, I do not know what life means to other people but I do know what it means to me, and I have worked out a method for measuring it.

I wake up at 4:00 AM in the morning, pray, read the Bible , run 2 to 5 miles, drink two 8 ounce glasses of orange juice, eat cold or hot cereal, toast , check e-mails, start for the office—and so forth. This is the crude data. When I take the days as they come, I put a plus beside the living hours and a minus before the inactive ones, find out just what makes the lives ones live and the inactive ones just existence. Can we catch the nuances of life in such an analysis? The Anthropologists and Sociologists will say “No”. but I am a psychologist whose interest is individual behavior.

My notes of personal self-examination show a classification of fifteen states of being in which I feel I am alive, and five in which I feel I only exist. These are my major states, in my humble opinion. Additionally, I find scores of sub-states are much too tenuous for me to analyze. The fifteen classifications of being are the following:

• I appear to live when I am being creative—writing an informative statement or writing a story;
• Listening to Brahm’s 1st or 2nd Symphony; Beethoven’s 5th Symphony; Stravinsky’s Firebird or just about any Italian opera affect me as though I took the composer’s mind into mine. What a high! Whoa!
• I live when I am stimulated by great discussion, good argument. There is vitality in just dealing in the plethora of ideas that others can and often do bring to the table.
• Unconditional, no strings attached love is life. This very real to me. It is the unconditional love one has for their friends that require no material exchange or sexual intent.
• The trees, streams, hills, plains, and winds of Oklahoma renews me. As in the case of classical composers, I am stimulated to create and be excited about life especially following a jog.
• I live when I am in the pressure of a challenge—working with angry teens, being in the military reserves, working with a family wherein a loved one has died and having to make important decisions.
• I feel very much alive in the presence of those who are experiencing the loss of a loved one. Showing empathy, mercy and compassion for a person’s loss is a great demonstration of being human.
• I live when I am around children and teens. I live when they are smiling, asking questions about life, liberty, happiness, forgiveness, compassion and mercy. When they express their unconditional love for God, their country, their family and friends signifies their growth within the human family.
• I live when I play. It does not matter where it is—indoors or outdoors. It become even more special when others are involved because of my ability to interact with others. Such activities as chess, shooting a basketball, jogging around the Shawnee neighborhood, playing Candy Land, Old Maid or Scrabble before the giggles of a daughter or son is heavenly!
• I live when in the relative silence of my study, bed or car I can talk to God then listen to His response when reading or in church His Word in the Bible. Isn’t it a shame that those who hate God hate who they are—a worshipping being. They must rely on a hate to be!
• I live when I laugh with or with family, friends and strangers.
• I live when I enjoy my favorite foods when genuinely hungry or when drinking a cool drink of water when thirsty.
• I live when I sleep. Sleeping well after a challenging day of dealing with others, working hard at fixing items around the house or drinking across the breadths and lengths of the Great State of Oklahoma is a great feeling. In vivid, relaxing dreams I am convinced one lives.
• I live to learn by my research and listening to the perspectives of others.
• I live in the joy of being Native American, African-American and European-American thankful proud of my ancestors who made me possible. Women and men who loved more than they hated the distinctions and beauty that difference offers humanity. A knowledge that few have come to love and respect. For I am who I am. Not as the world and people would view me but as the great “I am” does that many liberal thinkers cannot understand or can tolerate.

In contrast to “living” I have found five main states of “existence”:

• I exist when I perform unpleasant but necessary processes to live—vacuuming the floors at home; writing progress notes, landscaping around the house, going to grocery stores when thousands of people are there trying to get an item you want or need.
• I exist while disagreeing with those who sanction the culture of death—abortion without restriction, the starvation of the handicapped to death; euthanasia. All act I believe are an affront to God, His principles of life and a sin for those who do these acts or allow such acts to occur.
• I exist while disagreeing with “Christophobics” who hate God, religion and Christianity so much they are willing to lie and distort the important of Christianity to society and the growth of societies as we know them.
• I exist while abhorring the sheer ugliness of air pollution , the throwing of trash or litter on cities, roads and the river ways of the world.
• I exist when listening to biased radio and television talking heads whose interest is to advance socialism, anarchy and intolerance of opposing points of view while establishing barriers to protest their erroneous thoughts.

So in a general way, I distinguish as different. I must admit in the course of “living” is
life is a mental state independent of one’s environment or occupation. One may, for example, come alive at the coming of spring that may bring alive one’s surroundings. But one may be invigorated by dressing up or planting a tulip garden. By and large there appears to be a cause for living and definite reason for existing. Yet in spite of these distinctions, there is an increasing move by those in support of a culture of death to redefine life and existence. They have injected “quality” and “personhood”—concepts just as complex as “life” and “existence” but made more complex by making materialistic consideration based on fear.

I have made some estimates with regards to the actual time I have spent above and below the “existence” line. For example, the notes I made and kept show that in one week, of the 168 hours, I only “lived” about 50 of them, or 30 per cent of the total time. This allowed for some creative work, some genuine hunger, some healthy sleep, listening to the radio broadcast of the Metropolitan opera’s “Aida” and two hours of interesting discussion with old friends of the Shawnee Jaycees.

It may be that the states of being which release life in me release it in most human beings. Generally speaking, one’s life on earth is bound and closely associated with their relationship with Almighty God, living by the spend and with in His writing as well as living with humankind within the spirits of unconditional love, humility, mercy, compassion and forgiveness.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE