Biophysics - me as a living system

I know I'm a "living system" because I... well. to tell the truth I don't know anything. I can't rule out the possibility that there are spirits and energies and movements and patterns that are surrounding us always, a kind of "life" beyond what we can understand and recognize - entities and patterns that are self generating, intelligent, organized and kinetic, that are completely out of reach of human perception.  We feel the edges of this through the patterns and entities that humans can sense when we cultivate a very different awareness than what our culture demands... deep meditation, or "psychadelics" - such a crude "civilized" word for plant spirits who work within our ancient minds to show us things we pass over on our own... we are creatures that rely on other species to make us whole, the biome in our gut, the plant medicines that heal our bodies hearts and psyches...

but I am part of the collective dream where we people all have a cultural agreement that not only are we alive, but that as humans, we are self-aware and knowing in a special way. I can't quite stomach this intelligent man dominating over dumb beasts thing or the idea of land as "property"- I play along, as I get older i even let myself have fun with it.

I think we humans recognize that which behaves like our aliveness, as life. So in that sense Yes. I feel certain and blessed to be very much alive, these are my signs...

I grow and move and change all the time... from some force within that must be Life. my face looks just a tiny bit different every day, my hair and nails grow... I wake, I am overcome by instincts to move and shift autonomously - to stretch my limbs... to blink... and then I also decide to do things, in a big dynamic dance that is coordinated and makes sense (somewhat) goes on and on until I close my eyes and drift into sleep.

I have a rhythm. My heart beats, I can feel and hear this in me. I breathe, this breath moves my body, these things happen without me doing anything, they happen with a pulse, I feel the pulse in the vessels in my body... always going, while I am alive... all held by soft organic tissues that were never machined by anything other than the ancient unfolding of Earth's rhythms

I become empty and hungry, and ravenously thirsty, in this hot dry California summer... and then I eat, and I drink, and then I am not hungry anymore.  I eliminate, solids and fluids... I power myself with things around the environment that I gobble up and weave into myself, and then I change... I am not a closed system.

I created new life, had a child, watch the child come into being from nothing, a spark, and grow slowly into a little creature, and then pour out of my body in full drama, and then grow and eat and move in rhythm to become more and more the image of another little version of the type of alive that I am... and I remember being tended, when small, by other Lives like my own. I am not a system that operates in isolation from other creatures like me.

I get storms of activity and motion within me that well up on their own, and out comes expressions of life, words, feelings, acts, that somehow make sense and weave into my surroundings of humans and what we make, and what holds us up - the earth, the moving air, the plants, the smells and texture... and make the days circle around, and around, in a spiral, aging, and growing, and expanding and contracting, all powered by this mysterious Life force that seems to be generated from someplace deep within, and beyond, myself.