now this is rather ambitious for me to attempt however i think that our(the human race's) beating around the bush on a clear deffinition of what is life and what is not life needs to end soon.
the definition i propose is that a living organism is an aqueous solution with the property of selectively exchanging solvent and solutes with its environment, chemically reacting with ingested chemicals, decreasing the entropy within its borders, and creating aqueous solutions with similar properties.
if i'm missing anything that's generally considered an aspect of all living things then please state so.
one will notice that many viruses do not meet my definition of life as many are not themselves aqueous solutions, but are only found in them. however some viruses enclosed in envelopes derived from the host cell might be considered living under this definition, depending on their properties.