What is life?

What is life?
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When someone asked, ‘What is life?’ Swami Vivekananda answered, ‘Life is the unfolding and development of a being under circumstances tending to press it down’.
There is a story of butterfly, which is very much relevant here.
                ‘One day a small opening appeared on a cocoon. A man who happened to be near by watched it with curiosity for several hours as the butterfly struggle to force its body through that little hole.
                Then it seemed to be making no more progress. It appeared as if it had tried as far as it could and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and opened the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a withered body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch it because he expected that at any moment the wings would open and the butterfly could fly.
                Nothing happened! Infact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a withered body and shriveled wings. It could never fly.
                Nature created the tough cocoon in order to make the butterfly struggle hard and gain enough strength so that it will have a well built body and would be able to fly well. What the man, in his kindness and goodwill, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening where god’s way of forcing the fluids from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieves its freedom from the cocoon.
                Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been.‘
Posted by Shiva Trilok.