In mid-1970, when I moved into a house I had bought, I found a pinwheel mounted on a short, thin post in the backyard. As the wind turned the pinwheel, it caused a clapper to clack, clack, clack. The noise was annoying, so I pulled the post out of the ground. Some time later, I discovered I had gophers in the yard. Their tunnels crisscrossed the gentle slope, and their dirt mounds popped up here and there.

In the spring of 1971, I had friends and their Old English sheepdog stay with me for a short time. Their dog and my Afghan hound didn’t get along, but they liked preying on the gophers. One of the dogs pulled a gopher from its hole and crushed its hindquarters. The gopher was on the surface, dragging its rear about and defiantly facing the dogs, which regarded it with curiosity.

My friend and I pulled the dogs away and decided it was our duty to put the crippled gopher out of its misery. One of us picked up a big rock and held it overhead, preparing to crush the pitiful gopher. It reacted to us as it had reacted to the threatening dogs. It propped itself up on its forelegs and faced us with great defiance and determination. It turned to follow us as we circled behind it, trying to escape its gaze. Neither of us could drop the rock on the vigilant gopher. Finally, we covered the gopher with a cloth and crushed it with the rock.

Beneath the various religious incantations, which any objective observer has to dismiss as human constructs, the real question concerns the life force and one of its manifestations, the will to live. The purpose of life is to live and perpetuate itself. What is that life force, and where did it come from? It’s a question that people have pondered since the birth of human consciousness. No one has ever found the answer, and no one ever will.