What is the most important thing about being alive?

I asked a woman who spoke on our last call to write something about the expereince that she was describing on the call. This poetic description is what she wrote back.  Jeff

...I've been thinking about the fact that even though we're in the middle of an information explosion and in the middle of our lives, a question like, "what is most important about being alive?" presents us with a "blank slate".    As if we're at the starting point.

We've been breathing since birth, but between every single in-breath and out-breath, there is a very brief, but physical sensation of neither.  There's a gap there.  Questioning the value of life itself belongs to that liminal, in-between place where life and death are defined.  It is that close to our human experience and that profound in its implications.  With every single breath we take, we start again, we choose to stay alive.  The question is, "why?"...