Life: What It Means to Me

There is a story or meaning behind every name or nickname—both those we’re given and those that we choose. What is meaningful to you about your name? 

Eva, meaning "life" in Hebrew. The one and only gift we've been given all the same. Life. Hills rolling up and down out of sight, decorated by some of the simplest--yet most beautiful--flora you've ever seen. Life. What any and every piece of art is depicting, even if only a small part. Life!

When I think of my name, life, I think of children yet to bask in anything other than their innocence and simple wants or needs in life. I think of when I was a young child myself, walking along the empty sidewalks every Sunday morning with my mother and older brother, quiet except for our little voices, the singing birds, and the wind blowing through the arrangements of flowers placed along the walkway right before we would walk under the concrete bridge with the bright yellow clearance sign on it. I think of the wonderful, unique smell of all the flowers' scents wafting into my nose and accompanying my little kid self's perception of happiness. To this day, I can smell scents like that, and it'll remind me of contentment, nostalgia, and the simple joys in life.

However complex life can be, it's so very simple to us, really. After all, we are images of life ourselves. To be named after such a wonderful thing is something I remind myself of joyfully from time to time. 

Everything is an image of life. Everything we learn, use, know, create, and reuse is all made of--or for--life. We make art to show others how we perceive time, nature, beauty, and love. We design buildings to encapsulate and protect living beings. Most of all, though, we flourish to make our life one worth living and not simply just a matter of survival. For the simplest form of my identity to be reminiscent of such things is beautiful to me. I wouldn't have it any other way, really. 

Nothing is more enrapturing than the scene of hilly plains, holding wild grass and tall, vibrant flowers that bow to the wind and embrace the sun. Deer prancing in the surrounding forests, some carefully approaching the open plains to bask in the loveliness that mirrors a crucial quality of themselves: life.