I Am Alive

I know I am a living system...

Defining something as "alive" is rather difficult owing to the fact that the word has many mutations of use and more than one quality which it can define. That being said, it is hard to know if one is alive. If I were to let go of the assumption that I am alive and pretend that there was something that I did not know what would I find?

"the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death."

"the existence of an individual human being or animal."

I pulled these off of a quick google search. I guess you could use these to assess what you are experiencing as life at this moment. From a Qi perspective though, everything has Qi flowing through it. Is Qi a definition of life? 

Honestly though I would say that life is the ability to experience yourself and your environment. It's a level of consciousness but even a bacteria has an experience of being a bacteria. Whether or not it can remember it or even understand it is irrelevant. Does a rock experience itself or the surroundings in which it finds itself? Well if it does we can't really see a reaction from the rock of different stimulus that it experiences. Plants whither when pulled from soil so they are having a different reaction to experience.