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Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Life

Life The property that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and organic dead bodies; animate existence characterized by active metabolism, growth, reporduction, and response to stimuli. - Dictionary of Ecology and Environmental Science, 1993, p. 305   - - - - - - -   noun   The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. The characteristic state or condition of a living organism. Living organisms considered as a group. - Wordnick.com, 2023

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Life Defined:

The History of Life:

"The history of life on Earth is an incredibly complex story. At the present moment, there are somewhere between 5 and 15 million species alive on our planet. Because more than 99 percent of all the species that ever lived are extinct, this suggests that hundreds of millions of species have lived on Earth, and probably a lot more, since the origin of life 3.5 billion years ago or even earlier." - Donald R. Prothero in his book, The Story of Life in 25 Fossils (Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution), p. IX (Preface)

Life as a Cosmic Imperative?

"The origin of life on Earth may be divided into two stages separated by the first appearance of replicable molecules, most probably of RNA. The first stage depended exclusively on chemistry. The second stage likewise involved chemistry, but with the additional participation of selection, a necessary concomitant of inevitable replication accidents. Consideration of these two processes suggests that the origin of life may have been close to obligatory under the physical–chemical conditions that prevailed at the site of its birth. Thus, an extrasolar planet in which those conditions were replicated appears as a probable site for the appearance of extra-terrestrial life."   - Christian de Duve, Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society, A (2011) 369, 620–623

The Old Way:

"But our human world was overwhelming. People had all the power and made all the decisions. With their indifference to anything nonhuman, the world was at their mercy. So as I saw it, there were two spheres of existence - the one I lived in, which was the sphere of people, and the one I barely knew, which was the sphere of everything else, from amoebas to blue whales, from duckweed to giant sequoias, from the floor of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Everest. Every living thing in that second sphere belonged to what I've come to call the Old Way, keeping the old rules that evolution set out for each species, the rules that helped us stay alive and move our genes into the future. The Old Way put us here, although we no longer respect that." - Elizabeth Marshall Thomas in her book, Dreaming of Lions (My Life in the Wild Places), p. 25

The Wonder and Grandeur of Life and Evolution:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." - Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859

Arthur Schopenhauer

"Those who don't wonder about the contingency of the world's existence are mentally deficient."

Chief Crowfoot

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter   time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Light Transformed Into The Energy In Food:

"The process shared by all living things of extracting energy from foods is called cellular respiration, and occurs in the cell's tiny mitochondria. In higher animals, after food materials are digested, the energy-rich molecules are carried in the bloodstream to the body's cells. Among many physiological functions, the energy from foods makes muscles move and transfers messages through the nervous system."   "Autotrophic plants hold the key to life on Earth; they alone are the intermediaries between the sun and all other creatures. And it is their leaves' microscopic chloroplasts that have the awesome responsibility of making the system work."   Brian Capon in his book, Botany For Gardeners (An Introduction to the Science of Plants), Fourth Edition, pp. 187-188

A Short Dance
Copyright © 1992 Roger J. Wendell

Published by the Garden Doctor
editor John A. Starnes, Jr.
No. 20, Fall, 1992, p. 27

Imagine holding your hands in front of your chest - as if to illustrate a length or distance. Between these hands our lives flash like the ephemeral dance of a mayfly. One hand indicates our beginning, while the other signals the end - the space in between may be all we ever have. If you're like me you may not know exactly who to thank for this short dance, nevertheless, it's good to be here. Besides just "being here now," what else is important? Well, other life, that's what. All life. That includes every lichen, redwood, beaver, bear, and bobcat. Each has as much "right" to be here as me or anyone else. Life's choreography is a display as rich and varied as anything we could ever invent or imagine. Like the turning, whirling dance of Shiva, each living being has a magical presence that is wondrously hypnotic. Yet, our modern, artificial existence blinds us to the real beauty of life. Bankrupt ideologies and social systems separate us ever further from the wonder of this, our organic heritage. For me, the complexity and vibrancy of living things is a collection of verse as sacred as any Bible or Veda. From the ashes of burnt stars rose this wonderfully indescribable phenomenon that has graced our planet for over three billion years. Unmolested, life's breathtaking diversity, beauty, and abundance reigned for a thousand million generations. Until now. Now, with a sadness so deep and profound that it defies description, I am forced to witness the desecration of the very evolutionary fabric that binds us all. Nature, on every corner of the globe, is being crushed by the asphalt glacier of human greed and ignorance. All of us have watched it. Our techno-industrial society's relentless conquest of the natural world is taking its toll. From shopping malls and housing tracts, to patchwork clear-cuts and strip mines, our globe's fragile network of ecosystems is being severed forever. The ecological loses that have occurred over the last decade alone read like a wartime body count. More than just numbers, imagine what it really means to lose an eagle, a forest, or an entire species. Gone, lost forever. And with it too our own sense of freedom and aliveness - the very essence of our being. Every whale, elk, and snail darter has a right to compete for its existence free of artificial interference. Our cultural ethic must be to preserve and protect - not to pillage and pilfer at greed's whim. It's an outrage that our collective consciousness, as a species, allows us to degrade any life, let alone sweep it aside with cavalier abandon for sport or profit. The dance of life is too special, too sacred, to be debased and destroyed by such arrogance. These are desperate times. Do we console and comfort ourselves with technological hallucinations and imagery while organic evolution is killed? Or do we act before the close of hands at the end of our own short lives? Compromise, platitudes, and promises mean nothing to living organisms and beauty. The answer is much deeper. Immerse yourself in nature and you will emerge with the vision necessary to guard that most sacred of dances. Touch the heart of wilderness and you will know the universe, you will know life, and you will know the answer.

The Train Ride
(Author Unknown)

Life is like a train ride. We get on. We ride. We get off. We get back on and ride some more. There are accidents and there are delays. At certain stops, there are surprises. Some of these will translate into great moments of joy; some will result in profound sorrow.

When we are born and we first board the train, we meet people whom we think will be with us for the entire journey. Those people are our parents! Sadly, this is far from the truth. Our parents are with us for as long as we absolutely need them. They too have journeys they must complete. We live with the memories of their love, affection, friendship, guidance, and their ever presence.

There are others who board the train and who eventually become very important to us. These people are our brothers, sisters, friends, and acquaintances, whom we will learn to love and cherish.

Some people consider their journey like a jaunty tour. They will just go merrily along. Others will encounter many upsets, tears, losses on their journey. Others still, will linger on to offer a helping hand to anyone in need. Some people on the train will leave an everlasting impression when they get off. Some will get on and get off the train so quickly, they will scarcely leave a sign they ever travelled along with you or ever crossed your path.

We will sometimes be upset that some passengers, whom we love, will choose to sit in another compartment and leave us to travel on our own. Then again, there is nothing saying we cannot seek them out anyway. Nevertheless, once sought out and found, we may not even be able to sit next to them because the seat may already be taken.

That is okay, everyone's journey will be filled with hopes, dreams, challenges, setback, and goodbyes. We must strive to make the best of it, no matter what. We must constantly strive to understand our travel companions and look for the best in everyone.

Remember, at any moment during our journey, any one of our travel companions can have a weak moment and be in need of our help. We too may vacillate or hesitate, even trip, hopefully we can count on someone being there to be supportive and understanding.

The bigger mystery of our journey is we do not know when our last stop will come. Neither do we know when our travel companions will make their last stop. Not even those sitting on the seat next to us.

Personally, I know I will be sad to make my final stop.

My separation from all those friends and acquaintances I made during the train ride will be painful. Leaving all those I am close to will be a sad thing. But then again, I am certain one day I will get to the main station only to meet up with everyone else. They will all be carrying their baggage, most of which they did not have when they first got on this train.

I will be glad to see them again. I will also be glad to have contributed to their baggage and to have enriched their lives, just as much as they will have contributed to my baggage and enriched my life.

We are all on this train ride together. Above all, we should all try to strive to make the ride as pleasant and memorable as we can, right up until the final stop and leave the train for the last time.

All aboard!

Safe journey!

My Soul Has A Hat

by Mário de Andrade

I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first, he ate them with pleasure but when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings where the statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience to stand absurd people who, despite their chronological age, have not grown up.

My time is too short: I want the essence; my spirit is in a hurry. I do not have much candy in the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans, very realistic people who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their own triumphs and who take responsibility for their actions. In this way, human dignity is defended and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life have learned to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I'm in a hurry. I'm in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts. I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.

Dostoyevsky on life:

"Virtually all of us cling desperately to life, either because of our love of life and/or our fear of death. I'm told there is a passage in a novel by Dostoyevsky in which a character in the story exclaims, 'If I were condemned to live on a rock, chained to a rock in the lashing sea, and all around me were ice and gales and storm, I would still want to live. Oh God, just to live, live, live!'"

Life, all life, is impressive:

"As in all living thngs, each creature does it its own way, and very small, perhaps almost random selective presures may start a cascade in on edirection that, once started, continues on its own momentum to ever greater differentiation and perfection. Not a shred of intelligence is needed to make it, nor to make it work. It is strange to me that life itself doesn't strike the average person as all that impressive, but for some reason 'intelligent' life does. When you consider life as a whole, intelligence is a mere bristle on the hog." - Bernd Heinrich in his book, A Year n the Main Woods, pp. 211-212

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