What a fun question, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas:contacts" />Linda.  Fun because so unanswerable, ultimately.  It’s tempting to say life is what remains after language, but that answer would end all discussion along with your question.  Some say that the only questions worth attention are the unanswerable, so asking what life is must be one of the best questions. 

That we can’t even ask the most important thing about ourselves is revealing.  Is the gaze of our intellect a blind spot?

But I’ll set these reservations aside.  Life is movement.  Life is because of the field of time.  Time in disallowing states, consciousness grasping each state after its edges have become transparent, already fraying into other states.

Letting my emotional life answer the question; what joy there is in change!  Therefore in life.  The historian recognizes macro change, but consciousness recognizes humble change, and only emotionally.  By full immersion, the heart dwelling while the mind destroys. 

Say, with a friend.  Maybe celebrating each other in conversation.  Countless shifts of mood, subtle tensing and relaxing of the point of attention, which moves as an artist moves the brush—half intentional, half responsive.

And to live life?  If life is to an important extent change, then is living not shifting delicately through the anatomy of change?  And is not choosing life simply choosing change?  The subtle, inconspicuous changes that because of their delicacy are regal.