Why Is Life Worth Living?

First off - excuse my pessimistic sounding title, this is actually meant to be an optimistic entry. (let's see where it goes!)
you see, i was thinking back to the amazingly insightful conversations i had with Nichole and Michelle today and well, the wheels were turning and i began wondering - why do people do the things they do?

why is life worth living? no one person has an exact same answer I'm sure, which is understandable. everyone has their own reasons for living life the way they do. my questions:
is life worth living if it's a party?
or perhaps a quiet home life with quaint comforts?
is life worth living because of a special someone, or a number of special someones?
because you live to rule your life?
or rule someone else's?
because you want to make a change?
or simply because God made you and that's the reason life is worth living?

of course there isn't a black and white answer to this. i know my answer is full of many different shades of grey and gray and red and brown and green and yellow....(yeah...)

and of course this makes me wonder - what exactly do you classify as living? of course every second of every day that we exhale and inhale is living. but aside from technicalities, what is Living? because i know for certain that my definition and practice of living is very different from the definition and practice of others - but that doesn't make either of us less living - so to speak.

when i thought this question to myself my answer was - seeing, breathing, hearing, talking , laughing, etc. etc. -you know, the regular cliches-
but then i thought: WAIT! blind people don't live any less than i do. nor do deaf and mute people. we are Living differently, but not any less than one another. and what of those individuals in even more heart-wrenching conditions? what of those people in comas, or dealing with a life-long illness or handicap, or life-threatening disease? at first glance they seem to be Living less, and I'm certainly not jealous because, quite frankly, i don't think i would have the courage to move through life in such strenuous conditions. but -always a but!- But, once again what classifies us or anyone as Living?

for example, a person in a coma who has no sense of the outside world, would mostly be considered Living quite less than anyone else, and the reason for their technically living anymore becomes a question -how hopeful can you be that they will come out of that coma?
to those of us of a third party, the strangers, we have this perspective -speaking generally of course- we: why make the person suffer more? and why make his family suffer more? why not pull the plug to spare the pain all around and move on? isn't that what the person would want?
and of course we take this view without malice or cynical wishes at all, but because we feel pity for these related individuals and we want them to stop suffering.

but -here's the other but- BUT, now if we trade shoes with this unknown, coma-rendered man's mother, or wife, or daughter, or sister, son, brother, father etc. etc. would we still have that same third party perspective?
well obviously not, because now we're in the first party - the party that shares heart and soul with this anonymous man. and as, say, the mother, pulling the plug of my coma - rendered son would be pulling the plug on the sun itself. i know if i was the mother: he was in my womb for 9 months. i gave birth to him. i raised him. i loved him. his happiness was my happiness and i lived for the child that i was blessed with. and now he's Living for me. he hasn't moved, hasn't woken up, but he can. and he's Living now isn't he? who has the right to give and take away life? no doctor, no mother. if he's Living now, however technically, it's because God hasn't forsaken our family with death.
certainly to a mother or such close family member, even this living is still Living. and who are we, as third party members, to argue?
-food for thought, no?-

anywho - went off on a tangent there.... so life is worth living for many different reasons and we are Living it in many different ways. it's just an interesting thought - to wonder about the strangers you cross everyday, why are they living, and how are they Living. everyone of us has our own little story, that goes without saying. what's fascinating is the loose ends of those stories that intertwine with other loose ends of other stories.

on a positive note: while thinking of all this I realized again how blessed i am to have so many reasons that make life worth living. they change from day to day. one day it's to wake up at 6 in the morning to take a nice walk full of deep conversation with Munera Khala, and on another day it's to enjoy the wonderful delights of buttered toast. Ah Life!