[QUOTE]
Originally posted by ben:
Biologically we are dying from the moment we are born
sorry ben i have to disagree with this. Until somewhere between 18 and 24 your body is growing and maturing. Then, fair enough, thats when your body starts to die. Sorry, i’ve taken this from a completely scientific point of view, but…thats me
yup you are right tall gnome, well spotted. my mistake 
you could argue that technically we are constantly dying and being reborn, our cells die and are replaced continiously, so are we really the same person we are born as?
My goal in life:- To get out of it alive.
—Below message from Freddie, because he can’t register quite yet—
“Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans.” - John Lennon
Freddie
I think we are only start dying when we stop learning. When I think of someone who is dying, I imagine someone like my grandmother, who is definately on the downhill slide. She is extremely forgetful and now cannot remember practically anything, and has forgotten how to cook, how to switch off the television etc. She has stopped learning, started forgetting. As long as you are learning in any sense of the word then surely you are becoming a new person. Every time you learn something new, a new connection is made in your brain. You have just become a different person to the person you were a split second ago. I don’t know whether I am making any sense but anyway. Incidently, someone did some scientific research on learning, and they found, unsuprisingly that people who carried on actively learning for longer (stuff like learning new languages etc) lived for much longer. 
So guys, carrying on visiting this site often enough and you should carry on living indefinately!
[This message has been edited by clara (edited 10 February 2002).]
tall gnome: damn right. from a purely physical point of view. you are born, you grow up to adulthood… then your body and its functions start to deteriorate, and its a downwards slide from then onwards. Clara’s point also fits in with this model.
Living is dying.
Death is the finality of our life slowly having run out.
Everyone dies. You are alive, hence you know you are going to die at some point in the future. You are always getting closer to that time. If you want to look at that way, you are dying from the moment you have an opportunity to die (being concieved).
‘it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees’ - aeshclyus
i think frank said it best:
I’m gonna live till I die
I’m gonna laugh stead of cry
I’m gonna take the town turn it upside down
I’m gonna live, live, live until I die
I think you can only answer that question when you have defined the meaning of living and dying as you have applied it to your life.
Actually it is both. Since we are, by nature, mortal and have not yet found a cure for death, the countdown does start from when we’re born. We know that we are going to die. We may not know exactly when and how but I dont think that matters.
IMO the finiteness of life is exactly what makes it valuable, but thats a topic for another thread, maybe [:)]
I think that the meaning of life is overlooked far too much. Maybe there is not a reason to live and we just do. Or maybe the purpose of life is to be purposeless.
All I know that in life happiness is important as above posts indicate, it is one of the many reasons for living. But life is also a challenge daring you to live each day and fight against your negative feelings about living.
If living is not what you want it to be, then make it how you want it to be. After all I believe that you yourself have a part in shaping your future, it is your actions and choice that lead you along the path of life.
Just remember impossiblities have been proved possibilites so learn that limits can be pushed… 
if ya ask little ol my opinion… i think the entire biological meaning of being “alive” is a bit of an abstraction from the processes that underly. i mean all it is saying “this set of chemical reactions” is a condition ot being alive. well tehre is nothing about thoes set of chemical reactions that allow life to be… its not like their purpose or anything shurly. the laws of the universe are just being followed as they are happening to be followed and you get sumtin that grows, and procreates n’ such.
anyway for thoes of you who think i just went off on a huge tangent there, i wasnt… i actually have a point!
i think that all of the universe (not universal conciousness style here) is alive in a way, so in that sense we are not living or dieing (i hope you know what i mean in saying this… it sounds like a contradiction i know… but since im abstracting from something so basic i cant really give it an actual word)… we are just coasting on the neverendin string of infantly tiny intereactions that make up reality =)
man i swear 2 years ago reading that i would have laughed at myself.
but yeah, tahts my take on things =)
I always tell people that we are God’s little nintendo game…
(analyze the rest…I feel lazy)
Personally I have always liked the quote from Braveheart:
I think we can all draw our own conclusions from there.
There may be no universal meaning to life, but that does not mean we cannot each have our own individual meanings and purposes and things we strive to achieve.
Evolutionarily, the purpose of life is gene propogation, but thats just how we evolved, thats just “what-is”, not necessarily “what ought-to-be”. I think we’re free to ascribe whatever meanings we choose to, within the constraints of human nature, of course.
"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. "
-Matthew Arnold
We are dying everyday…all procrasinators of the enivitable
We are afraid of what we things we cannot control
"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. "
-Matthew Arnold
We are dying everyday…all procrasinators of the enivitable
We are afraid of what we things we cannot control
We arnt dead until were dead. We are Alive, breathing and living.
But my grandpa didnt know he was dying until he was dead… go figure
Peace