Life dines from the thermodynamics table. Instead of sliding with the 2nd Law toward homogeneity, entropy, and constancy, Life becomes more complex, not less.(1) Life's a child running up the Down escalator.
The DNA molecule, inside the proper egg, takes simpler units and aligns them into more complex. Eventually, it takes simpler units and rebuilds itself, also moving against the 2nd Law.
A like exchange occurs between creatures. Some become more complex through the energy bound in simpler ones. Nurturance and hunting, variations of altruism and competition occur, elaborated from metabolism.
Creatures build things besides themselves, again a movement against the 2nd Law, from entropy toward complexity even while squandering more energy than is accrued. Wasps, beavers, people work in the same direction, against the escalator down.
The mating strategies of male and female overlay similar exchanges. The female builds new life but needs dependable resources. The pregnant female is a DNA analog; she takes in materials and replicates pieces of herself and the male, each of them using the other, still building complexity.
There is an exchange between youth and age. Older people with economic complexity (resources) sometimes make ever more complex things. Older, through their building, stall oblivion if not death by giving resources (money) to younger people in exchange for energy, strength, and optimism.
Shoppers mill around me at the mall, still fighting, unaware, the 2nd Law. And at the bottom of the machine, the little pistons pushing everything, our genes.
NOTE:
1) We may yet, if we don't run out of power, find some other ways around the 2nd Law. Recent discoveries suggest "antimatter" fountains in galactic centers. We need to figure it out.