Finding Meaning at the Boundaries of Life

by Sandy Sabersky

Liv Fun: Vol 3 – Issue 1

We like to think that we are free. Free from boundaries and limitations. Yet, though we talk about freedom, ultimately we are bound — by our bodies, health, minds, and age, and by what forms the border of our life — death.

Death puts limits on the extent of our lives. Not knowing when it will come increases the pressure on us to make our presence felt. Having death as our border, if we will acknowledge it, opens the doorway to truly living our lives.

Steve Jobs, when he was dying of cancer, is widely quoted to have said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

Rather than facing the fact of our death and letting it inform our priorities and force us to truly live, many of us try to avoid thinking and talking about it. We would rather go about “enjoying” our lives as if we will live forever.

You may have heard the story of the man who wanted to do just that, a fairytale written by Theodora Ozaki. (Ozaki, 1908) The author writes of Sentaro, who was so afraid of death and illness that he journeyed to the Shrine of Jofuku and prayed for immortality.

Magically flown to the “country of Perpetual Life” where people never die, Sentaro found a shocking state of affairs. Here, people worked in vain to try to end their lives. They took potions and sought poisons because they longed for the release of death from the tedium, sameness and boredom of a life without an end.

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Liv Fun

by Leisure Care
Spring 2014
View Table of Contents

Older, Wiser, Happier
by John de Graaf

I have spent the last four years immersing myself in the subject of happiness. What makes us happy? Who is happy? What matters more, attitudes or life conditions? Can national policies make us happier?
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Finding Meaning at the Boundaries of Life
by Sandy Sabersky

We like to think that we are free. Free from boundaries and limitations. Yet, though we talk about freedom, ultimately we are bound — by our bodies, health, minds, and age, and by what forms the border of our life — death.
Read More

Walking in Santa Fe
by Elana Zaiman

I walk every day. I swim a couple times a week. I shoot hoops with my 13-year-old son. I bound up and down the stairs. At least, I used to. The pain began innocently enough, with a swollen finger, then a pinch in my left hip that feels, every now and then when I put my left foot forward, as if my skin is seeping under my pelvic bone and getting stuck on the bottom of it on the way out.

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