5. Chaya Sarah 5781: "Beyond A Mechanical Life"

To live life is to live with the greatest conundrum of all, and to embrace the two antithetical working psyches in every breath that we take. And yet, so many have mastered it. And the gift of its mastery is not necessarily wealth, power or fame. Rather, it is but sheer true contentment. When every part of us feels acknowledged, validated, respected, safe and nurtured, what we feel is sheer true contentment. And no amount of power or pleasure in the world can buy that or even sustain that. In this lecture, we are going to explore the antithetical dualism that exists within us from the angel of our mechanical living and our passionate living. Yes, many clinch the challenge of this dualism by working all week, while enjoying the weekends, working for months, while enjoying vacation weeks, and by fulfilling our duties, and then enjoying our hobbies. For those of us who have abused our passions, transforming them into obsessions and even addictions, for those of us who pay the price with debilitating depression, and even the High-End Addicts, who successfully maintain their duties, therapy lies in, “Go back to the essentials,” such as morning showers, brushing teeth, and making beds. Yes, the road back is through working the Mechanical Life. And for those for us who have succumbed to the squareness of the essentials, killing our passion, dreams and adventurous side, living completely in rote, our therapy is to take a vacation, an excursion, and to find a hobby we do only because we enjoy doing it. Here we are going to explore whether we can consummate our innate antithetical dualism, rather than feed them separately, and we are going to explore this by first exploring the spiritual source to this dualism. This lecture is based primarily on a maamor the Rebbe delivered, on this Shabbat in 1969, exploring the life of Sarah, as summed up with the verse (-Genesis 32:11), “And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah.”