I am a living system....

I am a living system because I have the characteristics and attributes of an organic organism: I was born, I breathe the air, I require nourishment, my system has mechanisms to assimilate nutrients and eliminate waste, I can adapt and respond to internal and external conditions, and I can reproduce to perpetuate my species. And yet, to me, this is not enough. I recall a quotation from Jack London, “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.” Hence, a developed and advanced living system really lives, not merely exist in the world.

I am a living system……this is a very difficult question when we examine the first word: “I.” It presupposes that I know who “I” am. I have often contemplated this question. Many years ago, I spent a week at a Buddhist monastery looking into a koan “Who am I?” We were to watch our mind with razor sharpness and laser-like concentration to identify the origin of a thought and from that place probe deeper into it until we find a guy “who plays a flute with no holes.” To this day, I am none the wiser nor closer to knowing myself. And yet, part of being a living system is that we have the capacity and the curiosity to look into our own existence to gain awareness of how we came to be, what gives us “meaning” in life, and reflect on the inevitability of our mortality.

Perhaps all of this existential cogitation is biology’s stratagem to keep us engaged in our lives and help us evolve into the next phase of “punctuated equilibrium.”