""I am far more attracted to the idea of life being a (continually) creative process than life being a struggle.""

That doesn't compute, even empirically.

A simple examination of nature's food chains will disabuse you of that notion. For eveything in nature from single celled organisms to Elephants, and even Mankind, life is a constant struggle to find sufficient resourse to stay alive, while avoiding becoming the means by which your predators keep themselves alive.

It even goes full circle, with the largest and most invulnerable falling prey to the microscopic organisms of disease and parasitism.

If that isn't a struggle, pray tell how it is a creative process?

Don T.