Introduction

by Jerry Melin

Life is… or is it?

What is life? From Shakespeare's "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage…" to Ogden Nash's "Life is not having been told That the man just waxed the floor," people from all walks of life try to tell us what life is like.

Change your life if it is not the life you would like to be living. 

Take a look at the different definitions provided by hundreds of people. Few of the definitions agree, and yet we all use the word life and we think we mean the same thing.

Philosophers, comedians, generals, and people from all walks of life express how they feel in metaphors. They try to give us a feel for what life is for them. Look at the tremendous variety.

There are hundreds of quotations that express ideas such as life is an adventure and full of excitement, or life is an art, or life is a container, food, music, a disease, or a school.

Use this site to help you change your life if it is not as you would like it to be. Look up definitions of how you would like to have your life. Then realize this: you do not view life in a certain way because that's the way life is for you, rather life is for you a certain way because that's how you view it. You really do have some control. You cannot control all the circumstances and people in your life, but you can control how you react to circumstances and people.

"Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won't work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae."
—Etty Hillesum,
[1914-43 Dutch lawyer, writer],
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, 1983

"Life cannot be defined. If you try to come up with an adequate definition, you simply end up with a lot of meaningless words."
—Eric Butterworth,
The Concentric Perspective

"I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean."
—P. G. Wodehouse,
[1881-1975 English novelist, humorist], My Man Jeeves