I went to Widener Library, hoping to find something helpful. Wandering down a narrow aisle in the stacks, my backpack bumped into a shelf, drawing my eye to a book by Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
I sat down in the nearest carrel and read it cover to cover. Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. While enduring unspeakable hardships in Nazi concentration camps, he observed that his fellow prisoners who felt they no longer had a purpose were the first ones to die. He concluded that the main motivation we’re all driven by is the desire to find meaning in our lives. Based on this insight, he created a new form of psychotherapy called “logotherapy” (“meaning” therapy).
I’d found my missing link. While Smith had demonstrated that we all share a common religious history and affirmed that we are all spiritually connected, he never really explained what that spiritual connection was. Frankl’s theory identified that connection, namely that we all share a universal search for meaning.
Combining Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s religious pluralism with Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, I wrote my senior thesis on people’s search for purpose, in their own lives and in life in general. I concluded:
Whether we are all seeking the same, shared Truth or whether there are many different truths, we’ll never know. What we share is the process—the existential search—as well as the goal of understanding life’s essential meaning. Since we’ll never attain our goal, the best we can do is to respect one another’s attempts. If we focused less on our differences and more on the shared nature of our fundamental search, there would be a lot more tolerance and understanding in the world.
I laughed as I printed the last page and ran to go turn it in. I had gone to one of the preppiest, most academically esteemed universities in America and emerged a hippie.
Back in college, finding my life’s meaning had felt like a daunting task—like we have to take some big leap to live our big purpose. When most people hear “go big or go home,” they choose to go home. Working on John’s sheep farm helped me realize that small steps toward living your passion are just as good as a big leap, so long as my contribution to the world is somehow useful. If all I accomplished was to make three more batches of shortbread to keep John and his farm going for another day, then I had done my part.
Are You Talking to Me?
Push Past Your Fear
Before coming to John’s farm, I’d met an Indian woman at Mount Cook, in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Looking out of the youth hostel kitchen window at the snow falling thick and hard, I noticed a woman who looked to be about sixty-five struggling with one of the largest suitcases I’d ever seen. I ran outside in my slippers to help.
Have you ever liked someone from the moment you met, without knowing why? That’s how it was with Kamla and me. Although we had nothing in common culturally or generationally, we immediately connected and chatted for several hours over a pot of hot tea.
Before she left, Kamla handed me a tiny piece of paper with her address and phone number written on it. Too bad she didn’t live in Thailand or somewhere else that I really wanted to visit. There was no way I was ever going to India. I had no desire to go to a country that destitute, crowded, and intense.
Three months later, I booked myself a one-way ticket to New Delhi. I had just gotten back to John’s place from a mini-vacation in the South Pacific where I’d listened, spellbound, to riveting tales of India and other exotic lands from returning travelers. Ever since, I lay awake at night, my veins pulsing with excitement as I thought about all of the places I hadn’t yet seen.
I left a phone message for Kamla, letting her know I was heading her way. As soon as I hung up, a cocky American guy who came to work on John’s farm started telling me horror stories about traveling in India. “You know, they drug your water and steal your bags over there. I have a friend whose money belt was taken right out of her pants while she was sleeping on a train. Another friend was in a crowded market, when a guy pretended to bump into him from behind. Before he knew it, the guy had slit his backpack with a razorblade and stolen his stuff right out of it. Then there’s the ‘drop the baby’ trick, where a mother will pretend to drop her baby, and when you try to catch it, she grabs your daypack and runs. You’re going to have to watch yourself and your stuff every minute that you’re there.”
Now I was terrified about backpacking through India alone, especially as a single woman. I began having vivid nightmares about each of the scenarios he described. I bought a piece of metal mosquito screen, lining my backpack with it so I could hear a razorblade scraping metal on metal if someone tried to rob me. I also bought an extra money pouch, one for inside my pants and one to be hidden elsewhere. Even with these precautions, I was filled with anxiety.
My fear always shows up right on time, just before I have to do something risky or important. The conversation goes something like this:
Fear: “You know you really shouldn’t do this. Something bad is going to happen.”
Me: “Yeah, so you keep saying.”
Fear: “No, this time I mean it. Don’t do it; you’ll regret it, maybe forever.”
Me: “You could be right. Now, if you’ll just step aside, I have something I need to do. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”
Sure enough, Fear is always waiting for me the next time, right where I left it.
But as scared as I was, nothing was going to stop me from seeing the world.
Leveling with Each Other
No One’s Purpose Is Greater Than Anyone Else’s
Kamla received my phone message twenty minutes before my plane was due to arrive in New Delhi. She and her husband didn’t own a car, so she scrambled to borrow one from a neighbor and rushed to the airport.
Joining the hordes of people in the arrivals lobby, I was bombarded with sensory overload. Women in colorful silk saris and men in designer business suits hurried past me, elbowing each other out of the way. The airport loudspeakers blared with flight departures in three different languages, two of which I’d never heard before. I hadn’t gotten a call back from Kamla before I’d left, so I moved to Plan B. Scanning my travel guide for a cheap backpackers’ hostel, I couldn’t find an affordable one that didn’t have warnings about bed bugs and theft.
“Laurie!” Kamla called out, grabbing my arm breathlessly from behind. “Oh thank goodness, here you are!”
I felt as relieved as she did. We gave each other a big hug.
In New Zealand, Kamla had worn sweaters and jeans, but here, she had on a long, loose tunic with narrow-cut pants, which the Indians call Kurta pyjamas. Her husband was wearing a white, linen kurta.
“My name is Dalbir, but everyone calls me Dolly, he said, extending his hand. “I hear you’re another globetrotter like my wife. Do you like skydiving? Besides my grandchildren, that’s my new hobby!”
A grandpa who jumped out of airplanes. I immediately liked him too.
“We’d better go, ladies,” he said, walking toward the baggage claim. “There will be more time for catching up once we get home.”
I clung tightly to Kamla’s purse strap as we pushed our way through the throngs out to the car.
The roads were just as crowded and chaotic as the airport. People honked, shouted, and shook their fists as we wove our way through roads packed with cars, bicycle rickshaws, two-seater motorcycle taxis, ox carts, cargo-laden elephants, people riding camels, and hump-backed cows wandering aimlessly wherever they pleased. A thick cloud of diesel filled my nostrils and lungs when I opened the window to let in some air. Although it was December, the weather was still sunny and spring-like.
Everything