Life is that theme park that looked so dazzling in the commercial, but when you show up you realise they were lying and it's a run-down mess where the employees hate their jobs, the rides are rusting and falling apart, and the food is cheap frozen rubbish.
From another angle though, many have agreed that the 'cell' is the basic unit of life. Everything we typically perceive as living has cells. The line between life and non-life is very blurred though, because; what features define a cell? And we have viruses, which the consensus agrees are non-living because they are not cells, and they don't replicate independently or something. Only a small fraction of life actually appears to be conscious. How did life emerge from non-life? Abiogenesis? Seems convincing but there's more work to be done.