Opportunist

I do some gardening and home maintenance, as most who own a home with any land do.  I've reduced the amount of lawn on my acre in favor of landscaping.  It looks nicer and cuts down time on mowing.  When I first started with it I worked on the popular conception of planting things I bought at local nurseries and weeding out anything else from the landscaping.  As time has progressed, I've gone in a different direction.

See, life (living things) is an opportunist.  There's no cognizant thought necessary.  Life is just carpe diem.  Look at the various plants growing in cracks in sidewalks and roads.  They're going to get run over.  They're going to get weeded or sprayed.  If there was intelligence there, it wouldn't pick that spot.  And yet, that's what works.  Life seizing opportunities is why there is so much life.  Plenty of those seized moments result in failure (death), but those that make it through spread life even further.

Sometimes that life seizing life is at the expense of other life, too.  Quite often, actually.  Kudzu strangles out other plants all across the South.  Animals eat plants or other animals.  Mammals become dominant over lizards.  It's been going on as long as there's been life on Earth, if not longer on some other planet or moon in the universe.

Interestingly, the most succesful of living things on Earth is the only one to try to put the brakes on its seizing of opportunity.  Humanity is the only living thing ever to have considered the matter, at least on this planet.  Any other life on this planet that was as successful would simply continue to seize its opportunities until there were no more opportunities to be seized and it was so successful as to cause its own end.

But life is merciless.  Life doesn't consider other life or inanimate objects.  Life grabs what it can take for as long as it can take it.  It may look beautiful to our eyes, as does my landscaping that's now a mix of bought plants and wild plants that have joined the fray, but it's not compassionate or in any way loving.  Life's a bitch, then it dies.