Let’s see if we can gets these concepts straight here.
Life is a specific process in the universe. When a life is in a particular circumstance, it behaves in a particular way different than other circumstances. That particular behavior is called the synthesis of “Life + that particular circumstance”. If you change the circumstance of that same life, it behaves differently. That different behavior is the synthesis of “Life + that different circumstance” or a “different synthesis”.
What a life fundamentally is does not change with different circumstances, just as what a square fundamentally is doesn’t change. But life does not behave in only one manner regardless of its circumstance. To discover how life behaves in a particular circumstance, one must insert a life into the circumstance and watch the synthesis reveal itself. But the life is not the synthesis, but rather the fundamental effort that inspired the synthesis within that circumstance.
A part of the fundamental process of life is adjusting its circumstance. And a portion of life’s circumstance involves memory. So when the memories change, the synthesis of the life+circumstance change, a changed behavior arises. But it is still life, still doing what life always does, merely in a circumstance of new memories. The memories are not the life itself, but a portion of its circumstances.
So through learning, the behavior of a life will change yielding new syntheses. But what defines it to be life doesn’t change at all. A spinning square, a jumping square, or a blinking square, is still a square.