Life or personal life or human existence refers to the pleasant or alarming idea that each individual human runs a personal private career during their lifespan, based on the principles of free will. We find this notion very commonly in modern existence, and a swathe of service industries stands ready to help the hapless run their "lives" through counselling or even through life coaching.

A "life" as a whole may seem morally "good" or "bad", and become characterised as such. It (or part of it) may find literary reflection in a biography, an autobiography or a memoir. Some outstanding lives merit hagiography or a vita.

The career from birth to death need not appear as a uniform "daily life". Thus people speak individual strands within their overalllives: their "intellectual lives", their "workinging lives", their "family lives" and (particularly) their "sex lives". The religiously inclined may have "spiritual lives" or "religious lives" intertwined with their everyday activities; they may also expect an afterlife (for some the most important thing). In the interim, those who can afford to pause and to do so may adopt a lifestyle or assess their quality of life.

Continual doubts, however, may assail the would-be life-conductor. Acquaintances will encourage such to "get a life" -- in the sense of promoting fuller participation in human (especially socially approved) activities - often outside one's own personally-defined life. Coercive state or corporate agencies will encourage alleged "individuals" to submerge themselves in collective wholes: mass movements or teams - on the sportsfield or in the workplace. For so widespread a concept, personal life may seem fuzzy and precarious.