Many large organisms cannot survive without the help of other non-species organisms. For example ~ the ant species "Formica subintegra" cannot survive because they are physiologically unable to forage for and nurse their colony. They must raid other ant colonies to take slave care-givers.
While reading everyone's thoughts & deliberating, I've decided to reject the idea of "life" entirely.
At one stage, life needed to be created from non-life and this process would require the original arrangement of "non living" molecules to have the "properties of life" in order to create life to begin with.
Ex: chemical evolution in lipids.
Let us evaluate a lipid molecule's "properties of life"
(drawing definitions from wikipedia)
Homestasis: Lipids must maintain a molecular balance to be categorized as a lipid, their current state. Like us, this process of seeking balance is largely beyond their "free will" (or conscious awareness). Should either we or they become overcharged with electrons our current state would burn to ash and all functionality as a whole is lost.
Organization: "being structurally composed of one or more cells – the basic units of life"
How is it possible, that cells are established as life and then used to define what life is? I reject this circular thought.
Metabolism: "transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life."
Living things require a balance of energy, to be specific. Lipids may not transform energy but they have clear agency that effects 'other' molecules (being polarized) which does include asserting their agency upon the energy within those molecules, we also know they form structures and can create isolated environments for further chemical evolution. Indeed this is a tricky question, but life is a poorly defined concept, queue this forum. <3
Growth, response to stimuli, adaptation, I feel, are answered above. That or I am getting lazy, this took longer than I thought to articulate. I'll stop here and await new thoughts. Thank you for the platform, you're my kind of people, merely by asking this question, regardless of the answer.