Boundaries. We complain about them. We alter them. We expand them. Mental and physical boundaries are part of our character and fundamental to our existence. You won’t get beyond your skin. You won’t get beyond some kind of geography unless you move from time to infinity. Infinity has no boundaries and, thus, no geography.
Some boundaries are fuzzy, but you’ve learned to live with them. Fuzzy boundaries like your relationships or beliefs might be frustrating, but they are generally recognizable. Sharp boundaries like the walls of your house are easy to identify. You recognize differences in place by knowing boundaries. You can fly across a country like the United States, look out the window, and watch the landscape change from east to west or west to east on either side of the Mississippi River. The climate boundary is a bit fuzzy, but you see more green on the eastern side of the river than on the western side, where semiarid landscapes replace humid ones. Again, a bit fuzzy, but nevertheless a recognizable boundary: A boundary separates places.
You have always been a geographer because you have learned how to distinguish one place from another, mostly by experience. Your crib, your room, your house, your neighborhood, your city, your country. You’ve lived an expanding geography, expanding, that is, in a finite universe. And along the timeline and geography of your life, you have identified many boundaries. Some you cross; some, you don’t.
As a finite being, you have become an expert in personal geography. Knowing place, defining its limits, these are part of your character. You know that everything you are and do will be in a place that is more or less defined by a boundary or several associated boundaries. That is, everything except die.
We are bound to place throughout life. As long as we are alive, we have a chance to explore a new geography. Why, then, do some choose death? There is no knowable geography of infinity because there are no boundaries, not even fuzzy ones. Those who commit suicide make a choice between knowable geography—even fuzzy geography—and the absence of geography. Why would anyone, a geographer from birth, relinquish the very essence of what she or he is?
Want an argument against suicide? Base it on geography. Base it on the geographic nature of every living organism. Base it on the love of knowing, identifying, and dealing with boundaries. That’s the nature of life in general. For conscious life geography is a matter of staying within, crossing, or expanding boundaries.
Have a serious illness? Been hurt in an accident? Lost mobility to encroaching arthritis? Boundaries, all of them, but recognizable and possibly crossable. New geographies to explore. New choices to make about expanding finiteness. It’s better, in my estimation, to find joy in being a living geographer rather than to cross beyond both fuzzy and definite boundaries to go where there is no geography.
Some boundaries are fuzzy, but you’ve learned to live with them. Fuzzy boundaries like your relationships or beliefs might be frustrating, but they are generally recognizable. Sharp boundaries like the walls of your house are easy to identify. You recognize differences in place by knowing boundaries. You can fly across a country like the United States, look out the window, and watch the landscape change from east to west or west to east on either side of the Mississippi River. The climate boundary is a bit fuzzy, but you see more green on the eastern side of the river than on the western side, where semiarid landscapes replace humid ones. Again, a bit fuzzy, but nevertheless a recognizable boundary: A boundary separates places.
You have always been a geographer because you have learned how to distinguish one place from another, mostly by experience. Your crib, your room, your house, your neighborhood, your city, your country. You’ve lived an expanding geography, expanding, that is, in a finite universe. And along the timeline and geography of your life, you have identified many boundaries. Some you cross; some, you don’t.
As a finite being, you have become an expert in personal geography. Knowing place, defining its limits, these are part of your character. You know that everything you are and do will be in a place that is more or less defined by a boundary or several associated boundaries. That is, everything except die.
We are bound to place throughout life. As long as we are alive, we have a chance to explore a new geography. Why, then, do some choose death? There is no knowable geography of infinity because there are no boundaries, not even fuzzy ones. Those who commit suicide make a choice between knowable geography—even fuzzy geography—and the absence of geography. Why would anyone, a geographer from birth, relinquish the very essence of what she or he is?
Want an argument against suicide? Base it on geography. Base it on the geographic nature of every living organism. Base it on the love of knowing, identifying, and dealing with boundaries. That’s the nature of life in general. For conscious life geography is a matter of staying within, crossing, or expanding boundaries.
Have a serious illness? Been hurt in an accident? Lost mobility to encroaching arthritis? Boundaries, all of them, but recognizable and possibly crossable. New geographies to explore. New choices to make about expanding finiteness. It’s better, in my estimation, to find joy in being a living geographer rather than to cross beyond both fuzzy and definite boundaries to go where there is no geography.
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