CHAPTER 6

Repacking On Purpose

How Much Is Enough?

At many points on our journey through life, we have to decide what to take along and what to leave behind — and once we decide, how to carry it.

Carrying too much weighs us down so heavily with work, people, and possessions that we are exhausted before we reach our destination. Carrying too little leaves us isolated and vulnerable, with little chance of reaching our goals. Our only hope of success is to first take stock of what we need and then, figure out what’s the best way to carry the load.

So we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions. First, in general, “How much is enough?” And second, in relation to each specific item, “What do I really want to carry?”

We also have to recognize that no matter how well we plan, our needs will change along the way. Many of the things we lay out on the bed before the trip come to seem a lot less important once we’re on the road. It’s through experience that we figure out what’s really essential and how much we can comfortably carry. As a result, we often need to lighten our load along the way — not just physically, but psychologically, as well. Every step up the mountain, we must ask ourselves “What do we really need?”

The late John Williamson was a Harvard-educated, articulate spokesman for lifelong learning and new educational technologies. As a senior executive with Wilson Learning Corporation he mingled with the leading thinkers on change and leadership.

Richard remembers John like this:

I knew him as a friend, a colleague, and in his last eighteen months as a client, as he fought valiantly against his cancer while simultaneously envisioning his future. During that time, I often flashed back to scenes of him backpacking and interacting with the Maasai in Africa, so curious, so alive.

Just one day away from the end of his life, he talked about his impending losses. I sat by his bed, holding his hand. He laughed and wept unashamedly as he talked about our work together.

Staring out the window, struggling to see with his one remaining good eye, he said to me, “I always thought God had a plan for me to do something special in this life, but I never really found out what it was. I feel as if I never really found out who I wanted to be when I grew up.”

That statement penetrated my core. We wept together as he encouraged my work. “Push them to make a difference,” he said, “and don’t let them off the hook.”

He died the next day.

John’s words are a reminder to us that beyond all else is the driving need for each of us to “make a difference”; to believe that our lives have counted.

By finding our purpose — whatever it is — we make our contribution, however large or small, to our time. We discover, and bring to life for ourselves, what John called “God’s plan.” Discovering this plan, reimagining it as needed, is a lifelong project. One step that can assist in this, though, is a simple taking stock — what we call the Repacking Inventory.

Repacking Inventory

You do this every day. An inventory is simply asking yourself “What do I have?” Rushing around the house searching for your car keys is one kind of inventory. Tearing through your closet looking for one last blouse or clean shirt to wear is another. The Repacking Inventory takes that natural activity one step further, to a process that is slightly more structured.

No matter what form it takes, inventorying is an activity from which we all can learn something. When was the last time you moved? As you packed box after box after box, were you amazed by how much stuff you’d accumulated over the period you’d lived in your house? Did you wish you’d taken the opportunity to do some sorting and winnowing out beforehand?

Dave remembers how his inventory has grown:

The first time I made a major move in my life (from Pittsburgh to San Francisco after high school), I fit everything I owned into one very large knapsack. Five years later, moving to Los Angeles, I carried three suitcases on the airplane. Four years after that, when I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, my possessions filled up the entire back seat of my Chevy Nova. In Santa Fe, I got married, and when my wife, Jennifer, and I moved to Minnesota a few years later, we required a 12-foot panel truck. The last time we moved, which was after five years in Seattle, it took a full-sized moving van and three large young men to transport our worldly goods.

Not all of this accumulation is mindless. But not all is mindful either. The point of your inventory is to simply check out what’s there.

So we encourage you now to do a quick inventory of your stuff. Take fifteen or twenty minutes to mentally or physically wander through your life. Consider all the things you’re carrying. Open all your closets. How much of your accumulation is mindful? And how much is just stuff that’s piled up?

In other words, how much is helping you get where you’re going and how much is just weighing you down?

Imagine Aging

There are many ways for people of even modest means to escape the trap of carrying too much, or too much of the wrong thing. All involve making decisions about what really matters.

It is possible for harried people to live much as they do now and be much happier. It all boils down to where you end up on two questions:

• “How much is enough?”

• “What do I really want to carry?”

In answering these questions, many people make the choice to live a “life reimagined.” Indeed, many find that coming to grips with those two questions is the key to improving their quality of life.

Answering these two questions is an important step towards bringing your own lifestyle and workstyle into balance. It can also be a ticket to personal fulfillment — to a life that is simpler, less cluttered, yet rich with purpose and meaning.

This is the sort of life that more and more people are aspiring to, especially those who are facing the inevitable life transitions that come with age. So it’s not surprising that the organization AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) has embarked on a new journey to help its members do just that — to “reimagine” their lives.

AARP started the project by confronting a five-letter word that seemed to make everyone who heard it slightly uncomfortable. That word: “aging.”

What AARP found odd was that while most people in their membership demographic seem to embrace (rather than fear) getting older, they don’t like to talk about aging — probably because they don’t even think of themselves as old. Many see themselves as in better shape — intellectually, emotionally, even physically — than they were when they were younger. Consequently, their talk tends to avoid references to time and stage of life. They’re okay with aging as it’s happening to them; they just don’t see themselves as candidates for an organization defined by aging. To do so would denote a pessimism about the years ahead that most reject. By contrast, they see what’s to come as potentially better and better.

Why does this group exhibit such optimism about the future, especially during current times of intense economic and social stress? For one thing, they’ve embraced the notion of “repacking.” They don’t see themselves cornered into the same life structure as their parents, and they’re not going to seek permission to repack if they want to shift gears. On the contrary, they see repacking as a natural and essential part of life.

They’re living longer and healthier lives. They’re doing and contributing more, in longer working lives. In a world filled with more of everything, more years means more time to do and be more things. From the outside, it might look like they’re trying to reject getting older; from the inside, though, it’s simply about redefining what “getting older” means. It turn outs that wanting to feel young and alive, while at the same time not being afraid of aging, go hand in hand.

This is where AARP’s “life reimagined project” comes in. It asks us to imagine new ways to easily and instantaneously connect with others who similarly engaged in the repacking process. Imagine having a question, a fear, a dream, or a goal, and being able to connect with just the right person to assist us on our journey of discovery. Imagine physical and virtual spaces that enable us to more successfully navigate emerging life challenges in the new “creator economy.” Imagine resources that help us live our best life at every new stage — to continually support us in addressing the “what’s next?” questions as they arise.

It used to be that repacking was essentially a midlife endeavor, a mid-course correction to set us on our way for the second half of life. That model itself has now been repacked. As AARP’s project now highlights, repacking unfolds continually, at each moment as we reimagine our lives.

Richard recently passed a man sweeping the sidewalks on 53rd Street in New York City. He wore the uniform of city maintenance workers but sported a T-shirt that read, on the front, “Imagine,” and on the back, “No matter what you’re doing.”

It made Richard wonder: what if we invested every action we take with imagination? What if sweeping sidewalks, cooking meals, even writing a report for work or school were filled with conscious imagining and reimagining?

Repacking: The “What Is a Life Reimagined?” Question

We’ve come now to the part where it’s all supposed to happen — Repacking Your Bags … this is it!

So now what?

Maybe you feel like you’re in the opening scene in the classic film, The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin, the newly minted college graduate, having finally arrived at where he’s been heading all his young life, has no idea where he wants to go. His father’s business partner exhorts him to get into “plastics,” but this provides no comfort or direction. The only place Benjamin feels at all consoled is at the bottom of his family’s swimming pool, safely secluded in scuba gear and goggles.

Maybe it’s like that.

Unfortunately, we can’t offer you a one word answer like “plastics” to the question “Now what?”

We can, however, remind you that you’ve done this many times before. Although now you may have a better understanding than ever before of what repacking involves, you should recall that this isn’t the first time you’ve done it.

Any time you’ve ever moved, gone to a new school, started a different job, fallen in love with another person, even taken a vacation, you’ve repacked on some level. You’ve considered the things that matter most to you, thought about how they fit into the life ahead of you, and made decisions accordingly. You’ve made choices, set some things aside, learned new skills for the journey ahead, and set off.

You’ve unpacked and repacked, and since you’re here, still in one piece, and reading this, you’ve obviously done so with some success — even if it’s not at the level you’d like. Earlier in this book, even, you’ve used tools like The Good Life Checklist (page 185) to help set up for repacking.

All this has helped prepare the ground for the process at hand. The difference is that now you’ve got a framework for your repacking. A model for where things go and — we hope, anyway — a better idea of how to go about arranging them. You might think of it like the interior of padded cases for carrying electronic equipment. With any luck, repacking now feels more like you’re arranging each item in its own well-designed cutout, whereas before, you were just jumbling everything up in a formless duffel.

Lots of times what really stops people from doing this is the fear of committing to something new. It’s the feeling that the decision is just too big to make. We feel that we must decide “now” how we’re going to spend “the rest of our lives!” We see the life/work decisions as being too important — so crucial and overwhelming that we can’t bear to face them. So we avoid repacking until the last possible moment. Or until it’s too late.

Too often when we’re faced with decisions like this, their importance paralyzes us. The weight of future possibilities crushes us and we end up entirely unable to make a decision at all.

But you can overcome your own fear by keeping in mind that the decisions you make aren’t cast in concrete. Remember, repacking is a cradle-to-grave process. It’s more than likely that one day in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be repacking whatever repacking you do now.

It’s Not Earth Shoes

As you get into the process of repacking, you may begin to feel some trepidation about what in the world you’ve gotten yourself into. Maybe the life you’ve “always wanted” isn’t actually the life you really want. Maybe things are fine the way they are. Maybe you’re not ready for a change.

Well, relax. No matter what you decide, what conclusions you come to, or what decisions you make, “it’s not Earth Shoes.”

Not Earth Shoes?

Back in the 1970s a friend of ours, Chad Worcester, bought a pair of “Earth Shoes.” If you were born after 1965 or so, you probably don’t remember them; if you were born before then, you’d probably prefer to forget them. In any case, they were soft-sided shoes that featured a recessed heel, which supposedly enabled you to walk more naturally than in regular shoes. They were probably just as well-known for their advertising — a footprint in the sand, showing how naturally our heels sink down when we walk.

Earth Shoes weren’t the most attractive shoes ever made, but they did have their fifteen minutes of fame. Chad bought himself a pair and walked out onto the sidewalk wearing them. He looked down at his feet and thought how strange his shoes looked. He strolled around a bit and felt how strange they felt. It struck him that their shape and feel would take some real getting used to.

Turning around, he saw a sign in the shoe store advertising Earth Shoes. It read, “Earth Shoes. The last pair of shoes you’ll ever own.”

Chad found the idea that this was “it,” and that Earth Shoes were that “it,” too much to take. He wasn’t ready for the last pair of shoes he’d ever own. So he turned right around and traded his Earth Shoes in for a pair of sneakers.

So, keep in mind that however you repack, it’s not the last opportunity you’ll ever have to do so. Whatever decision you make, remember, it’s not Earth Shoes.

What You Don’t Have to Do

We’ll also remind you that repacking isn’t some mysterious process for which you have no prior experience. Don’t forget: you’ve done this all before.

Repacking may be like exercise, but it isn’t the loneliness of the long-distance runner. That’s why we encourage you to repack with a Repacking Partner, or check in regularly as you do so. Putting the process into words with another person allows you to test your theories and ideas before you put them into practice. You’re less likely to go off the deep end (not always a mistake, but not always the right thing to do, either) if you talk things over with someone else first.

In order to repack, you DON’T have to:

• Do it all by yourself without help or support from anyone.

• Climb to a mountaintop and commune with the One-ness of everything.

• Sell all your worldly possessions and start over from scratch.

• Quit your job.

• Join the Peace Corps.

• Move from where you’re living.

• Get a divorce or get married.

• Solve all the world’s problems. (Or even all of your own.)

• Finish the entire process in a single sitting.

• Be afraid to change any conclusions at which you arrive.

• Be afraid to change, period.

Midlife Repackings

Our culture’s conception of age is out of touch with today’s reality. In jest, people say that “50 is the new 40,” but, in fact, most adults at age 50 have more years ahead of them than earlier generations did at age 30 or so. Life expectancy in the West is at 80-plus and rising. This means that at midlife, many will live another four decades or so. The average baby boomer, at “retirement age,” has as many years of creative living ahead of her as she has behind.

As more of us live — and stay healthier — longer, more of us will find repacking to be an existential necessity. Some of this repacking will be inner-driven; dissatisfaction or a desire for something new will be the impetus. Other midlife revisions will be inspired by external events: job losses, the deaths of loved ones, health challenges. But whatever the cause, some form of midlife reinvention is inevitable.

Nevertheless, in spite of the frequency and obvious necessity of such change, midlife remains a mysterious and confusing period, and one for which most of us are, on the whole, ill-prepared. No surprise that it’s also a time when many people feel especially inadequate.

The good news, however, is that years and dozens of university-based studies on the over-50 age group reveal clearly that midlife can be a uniquely energizing time. Most people, by this stage in their lives, have developed a clearer sense of who they really are. And typically — though not always — they are in a better position than ever before to reflect upon their lives and challenge even their most basic assumptions about it. Consequently the potential for profound and meaningful change is quite high.

The last few decades have seen a rapid increase in the number of people who identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” This is a hopeful sign, because it means that without a belief in something greater than themselves more and more people are searching for something that is missing in their lives, something that exists both within and without. It’s an indication of a shared recognition that much of what preoccupies us doesn’t really matter in the long run.

We live in a society that gives us instant access via computers and mobile phones to a virtual version of each other, but leaves us longing for authentic human connection. Something more, something greater needs to pass between us, and that’s what people are searching for when they seek their own spirituality.

For this more meaningful connection to occur, we need to pay a higher quality of attention to one another. This isn’t the same as simply paying “more” attention to each other. What connects people is compassion, a depth that happens when we genuinely listen. The value of genuinely listening to each other, regardless of whether we agree on things, seems to be almost completely lost in an age of busyness and hurry sickness. The challenge is to create genuine presence, the kind of authentic being-with-each-other that may actually bring about real relationships and support positive change.

Midlife repacking requires us to transform two fundamental life practices: the relational practices, or how we interact with other people and living things, and the creative practices, or how we manifest meaning in our daily lives. Interwoven, these two strands form the thread of our lives in renewal.

The thread reminds us that we can’t expect to renew ourselves in a piecemeal fashion. Because the thread holds everything together, change in one aspect of our lives necessarily affects the others. We grow as whole persons or not at all. Without the thread, we remain half-children, living half-lives.

The larger fabric woven by the thread is the strengthening of connections, connections that are fundamental to midlife health, healing, happiness, and holiness. Holding on to the thread means responsible risk-taking.

At a time of rampant social disconnection, a big shift towards renewed connectivity is beginning to emerge. We are awakening to the ancient truth that all human beings are purposefully interconnected with each other and with all living things and living systems. Both Western and Eastern perspectives converge upon the recognition that we are all constructed from the same basic ingredients, the same essential energy. Like intermingled parts of a global mind, we are completely linked with everything.

Midlife repacking can only occur by daring to act upon this reality and forging stronger connections where it counts: in our relationships, in our creative lives, and in our spiritual essences. And we have to do it in real time — not later today, not tomorrow, but now. The cost is not insignificant; the payoff, though, is incalculable. As the novelist Graham Greene wrote in The Heart of the Matter, “One small act of daring can change one’s entire conception of what is possible.”

Having A Midlife Crisis on Purpose

The midlife crisis, which we prefer to call the “midlife inventure,” presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask the sometimes frightening, always liberating question: “What’s next?”

In a coaching practice over the last three decades that has been predominately composed of people in midlife, Richard has seen the pattern again and again. The “midlife inventure” represents a turn within; a wonderful, though often painful, opportunity to reimagine our lives.

The Gospel according to Thomas states: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Many people are designing new workstyles, “bringing forth” new views of the good life, new definitions of success. Success has different meanings at different ages and stages of life.

Richard relates a story he calls “Mind the gap” which reminds us how critical “bringing forth” is to our ability to navigate life’s inevitable transitions:

On the flight to London recently I sat next to a businessman. He irritated me by talking on his mobile phone loud enough for the entire cabin to hear. We had the sort of short conversation you get when you sit next to me. When the talk turns to small, mine vanishes. I’m not a talker on airplanes. I write or read.

After takeoff, the fellow made a valiant attempt to engage me, but I was up to the challenge with my truthful decline, “I’m sorry; I have a deadline to meet.” My response forced him to unpack his computer and play solitaire.

Later, as the plane was taxiing to the gate, he asked me the standard traveler’s question, “So what do you do?” He had been frustrated by my absorption in my writing. “I’m an author,” I replied, giving him the partial truth.

“I knew it!” he said. “I knew you were somebody!”

Keeping with convention, I asked him the standard question, as well. “And what do you do?” “I’m having a midlife crisis,” he said, smiling painfully. “I’m 55 years old, just got downsized, and I’m wondering what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

As we walked together down the moving walkway at London’s Heathrow Airport, I heard the familiar recording “Mind the Gap!” reminding pedestrians to be cautious crossing the transition space between the moving and stationary footpaths. It struck me that my fellow traveler was facing a gap that is equally familiar to many people nowadays: the gap between what we had hoped for in life and how they have actually turned out.

Navigating this gap — essentially the space between our dreams and reality — is especially difficult because most of us have had scant preparation for doing so. Most of us have more or less followed a script written by someone else, a generic script that typically overlooks our unique talents and passions.

To write our own scripts, we need to ask ourselves questions that enable us to bridge the gap between where we’ve come from and what we’re doing.

First, ask “What does success mean to me?” “I want to be somebody” is not an answer. What does being a “somebody” entail, anyway? Is the term a substitute for freedom and creativity? A more fruitful inquiry would be to explore a clearer conception of the good life, expressed in terms of “living in the place I belong, with people I love, doing the right work, on purpose.”

Second, ask “What parts of my life are non-negotiables?” What values are constant? Knowing what we stand for — our non-negotiables — makes our choices about the way forward more consistent with who we really are and want to be.

Third, ask “What makes me want to get up in the morning?” Each of us is born with a purpose and a sacred duty to fulfill its promise. Clarity of purpose — knowing what difference we want to make in the world — enables us to make choices that more accurately reflect our innermost natures.

But because so few of us routinely ask — and answer — these questions, we find ourselves to be a society of notoriously numb people — lonely, bored, dependent individuals who are happy only when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

We worry constantly about making a living, but rarely about making a life. In our businesses and financial markets across the country, people scramble frantically trying to make a killing, but end up instead killing their lives.

The vast majority of people endure their jobs because they see no other way to make a living. In addition, their work organizes, creates routine and structures their lives. At the very least, most jobs force us into a rhythm of weekend leisure, Monday’s blues, Wednesday’s “humpday,” Friday’s T.G.I.F., and regular paychecks. Our minds and bodies become so attuned to these rhythms that they become part of our own internal clocks. We forget that there are other ways of spending time or saving it to do the things and be with the people we love. We forget that there are other pathways that lead out of the wilderness, away from the rat race.

A Path Through the Wilderness

Psychologists know that the capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to internalize and to take responsibility. If we only see our life as a dilemma that others have created, a problem to be “solved,” then no change will occur. If we have a failure of nerve, no repacking can occur.

Conversely, if we view our life as a product of our own reimagining — as a mystery to be discovered — then we tend to remain flexible and open to new input all the time. If we’re willing to take risks and face new challenges, we can continually recreate ourselves to meet the changing circumstances of our ever-unfolding experience.

The invitation to reimagine is a summons to become aware (unpack our bags), accept responsibility (repack our bags), and risk the journey of life to which we are called.

Daniel Boorstin, in his monumental book, The Discoverers, documents that medieval geographers and theologians blocked the exploration of new worlds for centuries by their refusal to use the ancient term “terra incognita” — “unknown land” — to describe places on their maps where people had not been. They preferred simply not to include those places at all. They found it safer to limit their depiction of the world than to face the fact that much of it was unknown.

Any adventure is also an “inventure.” In order to seek out new lands and go where no person has gone before, one must first take a journey to the heart, the mind, and the soul.

To travel to that place we call “the good life” requires a similar inventure. We must survey territory we’re searching for, and map out a route to get there. This type of planned inventure is the opposite of unconsciously acting out the patterns or paths of our past.

Inventuring requires the willingness to acknowledge the “terra incognita” quality of what we do not know. Inventurers celebrate the unknown and appreciate the unknown wilderness in their own spirit. Naturalist Eliot Porter proclaimed that “in wilderness is the preservation of the world.” We see midlife inventuring as the preservation of the world within.

Each of us is trying to express more fully who we are. Each of us has a unique path through the wilderness. There is something meaningful — and even holy — in our diversity.

Without uncharted land, terra incognita, the process of living would lose much of its vitality and meaning. An inventuring life finds aliveness at the edges of discovery and growth. Some people naturally seem to live this way. Most of us have to work at it.

A middle-aged man in a recent workshop had spent several years making the transition from being laid off as the head of a staff department in a private corporation to teaching at a small liberal arts college. In that time, he went through several cycles — working on an advanced degree, taking a half-time job with a friend who was building a new business, simplifying his day-to-day financial needs.

In this workshop he talked about his future. He had tears his eyes. “Some people when they realize they are about to die say, ‘Oh, shit!’ I’m not going to be one of those. I’m taking the risk now to create the second half of my life. I finally got it — there is a difference between success and fulfillment. I had success, but I wasn’t fulfilled. Maybe success is getting what you want. Fulfillment, though, is wanting what you get. And I didn’t end up wanting what I got!”

The feeling that this man had — that of losing one’s center — is familiar to anyone who has dealt with demands of external success while trying to fulfill internal values and needs. For those who try though, Kierkegaard may offer solace, “To venture causes anxiety; not to venture is to lose oneself.”

Celebrating the Explorer Within

Richard admits, “The thrill of inventuring is consistently re-awakened in me when I visit Africa. Africa helps me understand and connect all aspects of myself. It causes me to open my eyes and see how I fit in. I am myself and everyone else too.”

Every culture in one form or another celebrates the explorer who ventures, who experiences the world, confronts the unknown, and returns with the stories of their experience to enrich the community. The exploration process, often called the vision quest, takes on new significance since it brings us to a fundamental understanding of our true calling.

The inventure life is a life of continual repacking. Inventuring means we’re willing to try on a wide variety of work options in order to develop a vision that reflects our true calling. This isn’t an intellectual head trip. It’s not spiritual pilgrimage just for the sake of it. It isn’t latching on to every hip new philosophy that comes down the pike.

Rather, it’s a result of practice — regular, daily practice. The practice may include being in nature, meditating, praying, playing music, drawing, sculpting, traveling, or simply spending time alone. All of these are ways to open our true calling.

Through such practice, we eventually realize a whole different level of aliveness. We come to feel our calling.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Most people go to their graves with their music still inside them.” Many people live their entire work lives and go to their graves never finding out who they wanted to be when they grew up.

Getting Here from There

Repacking is a cradle-to-grave process. It’s something we need to go through again and again in our lives to sustain a feeling of aliveness at whatever age we are. The good life isn’t something we can get and keep — it’s an ongoing process of reinventing what it means to live in the place we belong, with the people we love, doing the right work, on purpose.

We can, however, at any time in our lives, design our lives so as to be living our vision of the good life at that time. The key to this is a conscious awareness about what we’re carrying and why we’re carrying it. One person who has managed to develop the reinventing awareness — and fairly early in life, all things considered — is Richard’s son, Andrew Leider. Even as he began taking his first few steps into “adulthood,” Andrew decided to try to live his vision of the good life, rather than find himself years later dreaming of or having regrets about what he never did when he had the chance.

At 23, Andrew chose to live in the right place — Red Lodge, Montana — with people he loved, doing the right work — he was an Outward Bound Instructor — on purpose. Friends and former college roommates envied the choices he’d made. He said: “They tell me, ‘I wish I were doing something like you’re doing, but I couldn’t take the time. I saw an opportunity and felt I just had to take it in this job market.’”

Andrew compared their situation to his own — a situation he designed by regularly asking himself the “why am I carrying this?” question.

Most of my friends are driven by their current visions of the good life, just like I am. But they’re already strapped to cars, apartments, furniture, and loans. Within the next five years, most will probably be married, have kids, and be well on their way, while I’ll probably still be traveling in the mountains. If you’re driven to a 5th Avenue lifestyle, then you won’t be happy until you get there. But I’m not.

For now, “right work” is what I’m doing. I love the process of working with others, as a team, to affect people’s lives. I like working on hard questions. With Outward Bound I definitely feel a part of something important. People work here for a common purpose. We share a lot of the same values. We all seem to like doing things in unique ways. I guess that’s why we all enjoy experiential learning. The purpose and values of that learning are more important than where it takes place … as long as it’s outdoors.

Minneapolis is the place I know best, where I grew up. But home, now, I feel I can create wherever I am. I’m not settled yet. I live in four separate worlds — my family, my few college friends I have chosen to stay connected with, my Red Lodge local friends, and my extended Outward Bound family. Home is not one place. It’s the way I feel wherever I happen to be. I’m trying to put as much joy into wherever I am and with whatever I currently have.

Andrew summed up his early vision of the good life:

My needs are pretty minimal. I don’t have financial desires … yet! I have what I want — time and good work. I can get by with very little. It costs to live; it costs to get sick; it costs some to do the things I love to do outdoors. I want to keep enough in savings so I can take care of myself and still have time. That’s the good life to me, now.

Andrew’s vision of the good life evolved as he did. He chose to move to Durango, Colorado and take a job that allowed him to develop his experiential learning skills in new arenas. As Director of On the Edge, a firm doing action learning programs with corporations and schools, he repacked his work bags and his place bags. He purchased six acres of land with the goal of creating a simple, natural, outdoor-based lifestyle. Andrew’s financial desires increased, but he continued to do a good deal of soul-searching about the question, “How much is enough?”

Eventually, Andrew moved on from Durango to become Executive Director for Montana Yellowstone Expeditions, a non-profit organization with a summer program for kids that combined an Outward Bound-type experience with core life skills. He bought a home in Bozeman with his wife Cari Hanson and settled in for five years. Again, the “thread” he was following continued to involve his love of the outdoors with his passion for experiential education.

Recently, Andrew and Cari moved to San Francisco, California to chart a fresh course as Program Director for the Golden Gate Institute, an organization whose mission is to advance environmental preservation and global sustainability by facilitating cross-sector dialogue and collaboration, encouraging new partnerships, and promoting action. Once more, even in a new place, with a new job, the thread is maintained. Andrew’s vision of the good life remains clear.

What is the good life to you, now?

Is your vision as clear as Andrew’s? Do you know what you’re carrying and why you’re carrying it? Or is it time to think some more about unpacking and repacking?

Dave’s Repacking

In the spring of 1991, I had an epiphany. On a lark (or perhaps it was the first robin of an incipient midlife crisis), I had decided to take an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of Minnesota. This was my initial exposure to “real” academia since my undergraduate career careened off-course in the late 1970s. It was a lovely April evening, but I was trapped inside, in a small classroom, far off in the corner of an aging and no longer ivy-covered hall on the Twin Cities’ campus. Around me, my classmates, all ten to fifteen years younger than me, slumped in their chairs or stared unblinkingly out the window as if by sheer willpower they could keep the sun from setting for two more hours — until class would be over — so as not to lose a single moment of light for roller-blading or skateboarding. At the front of the room my instructor, a grad student, was splitting hairs and casting pearls as he explicated the finer points of the teleological argument in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In contrast to the torpid ambience, his words, quickened by Hume’s brilliance, flowed with a passion that would have seemed indelicate if it were not so authentic.

And suddenly, it occurred to me that I had come home.

The word “vocation” comes from the Latin vocare, a summoning, a calling; my instructor’s voice was summoning me back home, to my true vocation, to my original calling — the study of philosophy.

So began a repacking that included resuming my 20-year mission to seek out and find an undergraduate degree — and eventually, to teach philosophy at the college level. I can’t say that the studies have always been easy, or even all that intriguing. Balancing the demands of making a living with the need to read esoteric philosophical texts wasn’t always a barrel of laughs. But it’s been what I’ve needed to do. I took off a term when things got too intense, and I found that I didn’t feel whole. I felt as if I was off track from where I was headed … not that I’ve always been clear about where that place is.

What I have discovered, though, and what this book in no small way represents, is that I’m finally becoming the person I’ve always been.

For most of my life, I was trying to be someone. After repacking, I finally learned that the real art is in letting myself reveal to the world the person I am.

The repacking I continue to be engaged in has involved several choices:

• Devoting less time to jobs for which I get paid, in order to allow myself time to do the work I need to for my own mental and emotional well-being.

• Making do with fewer “things” so as to have the experiences — educational and otherwise — that I want.

• Learning to say “no” to other people in order to say “yes” to myself.

• Deepening the existing relationships in my life, as opposed to widening my circle of new relationships.

• Finding beauty and satisfaction within, rather than always looking for the next “best thing” that’s out there.

• Taking the long view, learning patience.

I’ve come to see the repacking experience I’ve gone through — and continue to go through — as a kind of blessing. And I’ve tried to express my gratitude for this blessing through my day-to-day activities in the world — including, of course, writing this book with Richard.

And who says you can’t ever go home?

The Two Deadly Fears

Nowadays what most people feel when they don’t feel anything in particular is fear.

It’s easy to see why. The world is a frightening place. Certainly, the popular media do nothing to disabuse us of the notion. Television, movies, radio talk shows all remind us to be scared, very scared. It’s as if we’re being told that the one natural emotion to feel is a sort of vast, overriding, and persistent sense of fear.

Our investigations have revealed that though people are indeed fearful, their fear isn’t really that vague. In fact, it can be broken down into two main fears, fears which we call the Two Deadly Fears because they sap so much of life out of all of us.

These Two Deadly Fears are:

1. Fear of Not Having Enough

2. Fear of Not Being Enough

You may be surprised that fear of death isn’t at the top of the list. But it turns out that people aren’t as afraid of death as you might expect. In fact, it’s said that most people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying! Consequently, it’s not all that strange really that the two we’ve identified seem to generate more chills than the mere prospect of death.

The Fear of Not Having Enough emerges naturally from our innate needs for safety and security. Obviously we have to meet the basic requirements for food and shelter before we can do anything else in our lives. But in a way, the Fear of Not Having Enough puts us on “overdrive” in our efforts to meet them. We become so fearful that they won’t be attended to that we overdo it. The need for food, for instance (even when it’s not at all an issue), gives rise to the fear that we won’t ever have enough. Before we know it, we have a kitchen pantry filled with boxes and boxes of stuff we’ve picked up “just in case” that we’ll never use, which end up being more of a burden to us than any real comfort. The Fear of Not Having Enough tends to make us grasp for more than we can handle in our lives, and consequently prevents us from realizing and embracing all we really need to be happy and fulfilled.

“The Fear of Not Being Enough” is the dread that we’ll go to our grave having never made our mark, having never “sung our song.” It’s the scary feeling that keeps many of us hard at work, often in professions and projects that overwork us. And yet, ironically, it’s often these very livelihoods, and the responsibilities associated with them, that keep us from ever allowing ourselves to really live.

The Fear of Not Being Enough can fuel our attempts to infuse our lives with purpose. If we can devote ourselves to a cause or belief larger than ourselves, we can — in some small way — achieve a slice of immortality. But again, as long as we keep seeing purpose as something “out there,” instead of something generated from within, we never really achieve an authentic experience of the life that we have.

Thus, “achieving” the good life is, in a very real way, a matter of reconciling ourselves to and eventually, overcoming these Two Deadly Fears. To do that we must clarify our own authentic vision of what “living in the place I belong, with people I love, doing the right work, on purpose” means to us. And that, perhaps surprisingly, requires us not only to embrace this new vision, but often to let go of old ones.

At some level, all fear is fear of the unknown. When we consider repacking we must revisit the two great fears, “What if I don’t have enough?” and “What if I am not enough?”

Unfortunately, there’s really no way to answer these questions except through experience.

In order to overcome our fear of the unknown, we have to get to know it. Doing so is definitely scary, but it’s the only way we’ll ever not be frightened.

Dave says, “When I was a little boy, I used to lie in my bed at night, staring at the closed curtain of my bedroom window, terrified by the knowledge that behind the curtain, a leering space alien lay in wait for me. I dared not open it for fear of seeing his terrible green and grizzly, multi-eyed face. So I’d just lie there, stock still, working myself up into a state of stark terror. Eventually, I became so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t do anything other than whimper softly and hope my parents somehow heard me over their TV set. It wasn’t until much later — probably when I was about 14 or so and started leaving my bedroom window open so my friends could sneak in at night or I could sneak out — that it finally occurred to me how I could overcome my fear. I realized that I didn’t have to live with it. I could dispel the fear any time it started to grow, just by pulling back the curtain.”

Same for repacking. If the idea of it seems terrifying (and there’s plenty of reason for it to) the good news is that doing it is the one sure way to make the fear go away. But does knowing this make it any easier? Probably not.

It certainly didn’t for Albert Brooks’ character in his delightfully dark comedy Lost In America, which even nearly three decades after its release, still rings true. In the movie, he and his wife give up their successful middle-class lifestyle to go touring around the country in a Winnebago motor home. As they set out on the road, the Steppen-wolf song, “Born to Be Wild,” blares over the soundtrack.

But Albert and his wife soon discover that for them, the freedom of the road isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And after she loses the family “nest egg” gambling in Las Vegas, they have no choice but to start over from scratch. He gets a job as a school crossing guard and she takes an assistant manager position at a fast food joint. The upshot is that within a few weeks, they’ve returned to the city and are once again working at their old jobs — although at a significant reduction in salary.

But at least they didn’t end up late in life, still dreaming about traveling down the wild blue highway, right?

What If I Get Lost?

When we make changes in our lives, even subtle ones, it’s not unusual to feel a little lost at first. Consequently, when we engage in repacking, it can seem like we really have ventured into a terra incognita. Even if the changes are welcome, we may find ourselves groping a bit, searching for familiar landmarks that are no longer there. It can be scary and confusing, and it may make us question whether we’ve done the right thing. The challenge, therefore, is to find some level of comfort with the unknown. Often that can emerge when we take the long view and recognize that where we are in life fits into a larger pattern.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t ever feel lost, but it does suggest that it may not be as difficult to find ourselves as we fear.

Dave tells a story that relates to this, in which he recalls the feeling of being lost.

When I was a little boy, my mother’s standard response when I whined that I had nothing to do was that I should “go get lost in the woods.” She was kidding, of course, and never imagined that her only son might take her suggestion literally. But one day, I did.

I set out from home about ten in the morning and marched straight into the suburban forest that bordered our housing development. In less than three hours I was hopelessly lost. I had no idea where home was and no sense at all about which way led back.

I ran around in circles, retracing the same pathways over and over. I remember passing a particular stand of blackberry bushes about six times from half a dozen different directions and feeling like I was doomed to repeat my steps for all eternity. Although there was little chance that I might disappear forever in this two or three square miles of well-domesticated woods, it seemed to my seven year-old brain that this was it. I would never escape. They’d find my bones, gnawed clean of flesh by raccoons and woolly worms.

After another hour or so of frantic searching, I finally found my way into a clearing that led to a hilly pasture. I ran ahead and came face to face with a horse. Terrified and relieved all at once, I burst into tears. My cries attracted the attention of the horse’s owner, a kindly older gentleman who owned the hobby farm on which I was now trespassing. He calmed me down, dried my tears, and took me into his house so I could call my mom.

I remember his kitchen perfectly — the dusty light, the smell of baking, the warmth of the hot oven. It had a great big wooden table, just like all farmhouses are supposed to have. His wife, straight from Central Casting’s farm-wife department, wore a flowered house dress and gave me freshly-baked cookies as fast as I could eat them.

Of course, by the time my mom showed up, I didn’t want to leave. After receiving an invitation from my hosts to come back anytime though, I agreed to depart. In the car, driving home, Mom asked me why in heaven’s name I had found it necessary to take her words at face value and actually go get lost in the woods.

Naturally, I said that I wasn’t lost, that I had never been lost, and that my adventure had been planned right from the start. Mom just smiled and kept on driving.

The lesson here, I think, is that sometimes, when we’re lost, we don’t think we are. But also, sometimes, when we think we’re lost, we’re not.

As you repack your bags and set out on the next part of your life’s journey, you may often feel lost. If so, it may be worthwhile to take a moment and consider if you really are — or if you’re just retracing your steps in the forest on your way to somewhere new. On the other hand, it’s also valuable to look around if you feel particularly sure of where you are. You may discover that you’re deeper in the wood than you think — and that might not be so bad. After all, there’s always a chance that cookies are quite close at hand.

What To Do If You’re Lost

A friend of ours, Sarah Carter, decided to give up her career as a mechanical engineer and return to graduate school to study architecture. Two weeks after enrolling she knew she’d made a horrible mistake. She missed her home, her job, her friends — everything. Talk about feeling lost. In just two weeks she’d gone from being a successful businessperson and homeowner to an impoverished college student living in a basement apartment.

Being a skilled outdoorsperson, though, Sarah did what any skilled outdoorsperson does in this kind of situation. She didn’t panic. She didn’t make any rash moves. She didn’t start running around looking for some way, any way, out. Instead, she just sat tight. She conserved her energy and regrouped. She remembered to stand still and listen.

Above all, Sarah observed. She observed the situation around her. She considered her reaction to it. She tried to get to the root of the anxiety and find out where it was coming from. She gave herself time to figure out what her options were. What could she change? What couldn’t she? What was worth holding on to? What might she just as well give up?

Ultimately, it took Sarah about six months — and several long weekend vacations — to find herself. But find herself she did. She ended up completing her architecture degree and eventually, opening up her own firm. Had she let herself freak out and quit school before she ever really got started, this never would have happened. Instead of feeling — as she does today — that she’s found her calling and is living it, she’d be feeling more lost than ever in her former life as an engineer.

Of course, the problem for most of us is that we’re too impatient. We get antsy when things aren’t perfect. We want our lives to be the way we want them to be NOW! No waiting, no figuring things out.

So, if you’re feeling lost after repacking — or even if you’re worried about feeling lost as you consider repacking — the best thing to do is probably nothing. Sit tight. Look around. Feel how you feel. And don’t forget to breathe.

Other Lost Souls

Robert Bly entitled a work of his prose poems after a line in a piece by the poet, Rumi, “What have I ever lost by dying?” Rumi’s message is that with every time he dies and is reborn, he sees progress. For hundreds of thousands of years, he was a mineral, then for hundreds of thousands more, a plant, then an animal, and finally a human being. You don’t have to believe in reincarnation to feel that this makes sense.

Every time you give something up, every time you repack — even if it doesn’t work out as planned — there is progress. As long as you keep your eyes, ears, and heart open, there’s something to be learned.

Michael Levy, a software engineer we know, shares with us his philosophy of change with regard to romance and work:

“You know what the WORST thing about losing a job or breaking up with a lover is?” he asks.

His answer: “You always get a BETTER one next time!”

That sure seems true to us. Lots of times, people put up with painful situations much longer than they need to. They’re afraid to let go because they don’t know what’s coming next — if anything. But once they’re out of them, a whole new world opens up. Freed from the baggage of past patterns, they’re able to see a myriad of new possibilities. Their self-worth skyrockets. As a result, they tend to attract more and even better responses, and the process feeds on itself, opening up increasingly richer options all the time.

It’s a bittersweet truth, but we see this all the time in older people who have recently lost their spouse. In the period immediately following the death, they feel lost and scared and are apt to spend a lot of time by themselves, hibernating and regrouping. But within a year or so, they have blossomed. You find them taking art classes, doing volunteer work, traveling the world. They look healthier, happier, and more alive than they have in years. For some individuals, the “worst” thing about losing their spouse is that they get a second chance to find themselves.

Lost (Re)Generation

None of these stories are intended to make light of what you may be feeling regarding your own repacking adventure. On the contrary, by telling of how people have found themselves when they thought they were lost, our hope is to let you know you’re not alone. Most people, when they go through the repacking process, experience a significant period of adjustment. You don’t just radically change your life one day and pick things up right where you left off the next.

You need to give yourself time to get used to the changes; to adapt, to get comfortable with what’s new and different. You know how it is when you literally repack a bag — things have to settle to the bottom. It takes a while for the lumps to smooth out and for things to stop rattling around. Same with your life. It takes time for new perspectives and arrangements to feel natural. And there’s nothing you can do about this, really. Time, like the people who work at the Department of Motor Vehicles, is one of those things in life that you just can’t rush.

In fact, the solution, when things seem to be going too slowly, may be to slow them down even more.

Moratorium: Inspire Before You Expire

Take a moratorium. What is it? What purpose does it serve? What power does it bring into your life?

Nearly everyone wants a time-out. Almost everyone needs one eventually. And we’re not talking about just an afternoon off. We’re talking about a real moratorium — a spiritual time-out in the truest sense. The root of the word spirit means to “breathe life into.” We can say, then, that a moratorium is the opportunity to step back, take a deep breath and breathe life into your own life. It’s an aspiration to inspire before you expire.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has stated the case for moratoriums as eloquently as anyone. “It is the denial of death that is particularly responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you will live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do. You live your life in preparation for tomorrow or in remembrance of yesterday, and meanwhile, each today is lost.”¹³

Our lives today are consumed by time. Growing numbers of people feel tired and overwhelmed. We now live in the United States of Exhaustion. No matter what we do for a living, we share a common fear — that the clock will tick away when we aren’t looking, leaving us unfulfilled and with no time left to fulfill ourselves.

What would your life be like if you took a moratorium? Would your family and friends support you, or tell you stories of people who had deviated from the straight path and ended up penniless and unemployable?

The moratorium way of thinking about time involves a major lifestyle shift, one that the world is ripe to accept. People know that there must be a better way; they just can’t exactly identify what it is. What’s important, though, is that, as a culture, we are beginning to realize that there are not just one, but many paths through time. The more we look at how we live, the more we see old time barriers that no longer serve us, and can be removed.

Paths Through Time

There is no one-size-fits-all plan for taking a moratorium. Ultimately, you will find your own path through time by unpacking and repacking — clarifying the good life as you go.

Even the business community is beginning to realize that changes are necessary. Corporations are becoming aware that to stay competitive, they need to alter their perception of time and its relationship to productivity and fulfillment. The economic and social implications of a burnt-out or unfulfilled work force are profound.

Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy was the first participant in a six-month-long sabbatical program adopted by the investment banking firm of Morgan Stanley. He wrote about his experience in a popular article for the Harvard Business Review, entitled “The Parable of the Sadhu.”

After my three months in Nepal, I spent three months as an executive-in-residence at the Stanford Business School and the Center for Ethics and Social Policy at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley. These six months away from my job gave me time to assimilate 20 years of business experience. My thoughts turned often to the meaning of the leadership role in any organization.¹⁴

During his moratorium, McCoy discovered that, in his words, “there is always time,” a perspective shared by another well-known time-outer, Lamar Alexander, former president of the University of Tennessee. In his book Six Months Off: An American Family’s Australian Adventure, he described his six-month hiatus from politics. It was inspired by a comment his wife made. She said, “We’ve got to get out of here … maybe for a long time, not just some vacation; and as far as we can get. We need to get together again as a family, and you need to think about what to do with the rest of your life.”¹⁵

They found a house in Sydney, Australia. The kids enrolled in school and Lamar set about trying to “do nothing.” He read books he hadn’t read in 20 years, took long walks, contemplated his vision, and in general, broke up patterns he’d been living for years.

What did he learn? After two months of close living, he said, “I think we always loved each other, but we learned to like each other more … I suppose we’ll look back on it ten years from now and remember the crocodiles and the snowy mountains, but the most important thing will be that we were important enough to each other to take the time to do it while we still could.”

It doesn’t have to be Nepal or Australia; it doesn’t have to be six months, or even two. It does, however, have to be a “change in the game”: a break-up and break-down of your usual patterns. We think the following example gives a pretty clear idea of what we mean.

Sally Leider’s Moratorium

Sally Leider used to give herself totally to her work. Every day, she came home exhausted, with telephone calls and computer work still left to do. At the end of the work week she collapsed into the weekend, desperate for a rest before facing Monday morning.

A compulsive workaholic? No! Sally was a gifted teacher of gifted and talented students. She knows that higher-order thinking skills and creative problem-solving talents are essential in today’s world, and she was committed to helping each of her students ignite the learning spark. She believes everyone is gifted because everyone has something unique to express — herself included. Still, even for her, timeouts were critical to her ability to stay inspired.

“I was very much on a high,” said Sally, as she described a 6-month moratorium she took after 22 years of teaching. “I found that I had more energy and a better perspective on things as a result of the timeout. It helped me develop new competencies that I liked a lot.”

Sally took six months to renew herself and finish her Master’s Degree in Experiential Education. To give an experiential component to her own education, she spent a month trekking and doing field observations in Tanzania.

The closing section of her Master’s Thesis summed up the benefit of this moratorium:

If my life is a heroic quest, a journey during which I discover my purpose, then how can my life be an expression of what matters to me? How can I be a model of my concern for planetary biodiversity? Through my experiences in Africa … I have further clarified my personal and professional commitment to confronting the biological diversity crisis.

She went on to say: “I always strive for new learning experiences. I hope there is reincarnation,” she adds with a laugh, “because I would try other careers the next time around. I would probably teach for a while … then I might settle down and become a naturalist.”

Several years earlier, Sally had taken a one-year moratorium to live in Mt. Shasta, California. It was the first time since she was three years old that she didn’t go to school every day. She explained, “I had a deep intuitive feeling that I needed a major change. My mother had recently died, and it was a jarring wake-up call to me. I felt so alone, yet so free — like I had an unlimited choice in my life. I was more of a ‘choice-maker,’ seeing my life through a new filter.

“In Mt. Shasta, I was doing important ‘inner business,’ and I was inspired by the new people that I met. They seemed to be consciously living many of the values I valued. It was a great opportunity to rediscover what I really wanted. And what I really wanted was to come back to my roots.

“My strong sense of place drew me back to Minnesota — particularly the St. Croix River Valley. Like a homing pigeon coming back, I was pulled by instinct. I felt I belonged here.”

Unless she had left, she would never have known where home was.

Louis Armstrong defined jazz: “I know it when I hear it, but I can’t tell you what it is.” In the same way, people like Sally know the need for a moratorium when they feel it, even if they can’t tell you exactly how they’ll do it. A moratorium gives them time to clarify their feelings and hear their inner music.

Sally summed it up: “Once you experience time-outs like this, you want to go back and do it again. After each one, I was on an emotional high for weeks. Thinking about this later, I figure that this feeling came from the daily freedom that allowed me an almost constant stimulation of new experiences, new challenges.”

Sally has continued to seek new challenges and to reinvent her vision of the good life. She took a five-year mobility leave from teaching to explore her curiosity about how to help young people — especially young girls — face the choices and changes in their lives with confidence. She created a coaching practice called Wild Indigo, dedicated to the purpose of guiding girls and young women to “bloom naturally.” She expanded her teaching into “watershed wisdom” in order to deepen her commitment to action on the environmental crisis. To complete her full-scale repacking, she also remarried and moved to the place she loves — the St. Croix River. Sally’s moratorium gave her the space to clarify her vision and hear her inner music.

Your Own Moratorium

The person you’ve just read about chose to take a moratorium. Other people are forced to take time out for retraining or to start new careers. With millions of people regularly moving in and out of the work force, disengagement and re-engagement are becoming authentic survival skills.

Increasingly, professional obsolescence is forcing people back to school for re-tooling and retraining. Lifelong learning, as opposed to once-a-life learning, is becoming the norm.

Individuals and organizations are trying out all sorts of options — part-time work, part-time retirement, job-sharing, hour banks, flex-time, flex-place, retirement rehearsals, flex-year contracts, project-oriented working, telecommuting, sabbaticals. All kinds of moratoriums are emerging as real possibilities for more and more people. Some businesses even find it necessary to include moratoriums as part of their compensation packages in order to compete for the best and the brightest.

Shouldn’t you do the same for yourself?

A Well-Lived Day

At some point, you may choose to take a chunk of your life’s time to discover or experience a moratorium — new places, new relationships, new work or a new sense of purpose. Perhaps you’ll end up “living in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work, on purpose.”

As we have talked with people about their moratoriums, many have told us that before they took theirs, the idea of doing so seemed impossible. Yet afterwards, emerging with a new life perspective, they wondered why they had waited so long. Sally Leider said that each day of her moratorium felt like a “well-lived day.”

How often most go to bed at night saying “this was a well-lived day?” And if not, why not? How can we purposefully repack to ensure that we do?

Ujamaa

It is said that once Africa gets into your system, you will always return. No one knows this better than Richard.

He has been called back to the continent — specifically, Tanzania — for some three decades now, drawn, of course, by the wildlife and wilderness, but equally, by the Tanzanian people. They are the essential source of the pull to return, the “thread” he holds on to each time he visits. Among no other people has he found such a spirit of purpose; in no other place has he seen such willingness to help someone in need.

This is the quality known as ujamaa, (or alternately, undugu) which permeates Tanzanian society and blankets the country in emotional warmth. Ujamaa means “brotherhood.” The word includes notions of extended family, generosity, and compassion towards others throughout the community and even beyond.

Ujamaa helps explain why manners in Tanzanian society are so highly valued, why handshakes are so full of affection, and why laughter is so irrepressible. It might also explain why the country remains a beacon of peace in Africa, why it opens its doors to so many refugees, and why it has historically eluded the power of a despotic ruler.

Ujamaa refers to the unspoken social safety net; the “haves” willingly share with the “have nots,” and one person who has a job might support a dozen friends and relatives who don’t. For most Tanzanians, it is inevitable that a long-lost “cousin” will eventually materialize and ask for work, money for an emergency, or a place to stay. And it is just as inevitable that the request will be granted.

Tanzanians are warm, friendly people who regularly welcome strangers with acts of enormous kindness. As a frequent visitor, Richard has received numerous offers of help from people with whom he’s become friends, like Koyie, as well as from individuals he’d never met before — ujamaa in practice.

This spirit of ujamaa has much to teach us no matter where we are. If you live with a spouse, children, an aging parent, even a dog or a cat, you sometimes have to put their interests or needs ahead of your own. It’s easy to resent the demands on our time and energy, but if we can embody a feeling of ujamaa, we’re more apt to embrace the opportunity to help.

It turns out that ujamaa is an effective strategy for lightening the load. In addition to reducing social isolation, it also helps decrease the self-absorption that dulls one’s vitality. Thus, it can lead to stronger feelings of purpose and meaning in our lives.

Since childhood we’ve been told that virtue is its own reward. In fact, research now shows that doing good for others brings very tangible benefits in terms of health and longevity. In his book, The Healing Power of Doing Good, former Peace Corps volunteer and community organizer Allan Luks introduced the term “helper’s high” to describe the rush of good feeling — ujamaa — that people get when they do good for others. Since the book’s publication, neuroscientists have learned that altruism activates the same centers in the brain involved in pleasure responses to food and sex.

From the study of over three thousand volunteers, Luks concluded that people who regularly volunteer to help others are ten times more likely to be in good health than those who don’t. In a similar vein, the landmark Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey reported that those who gave contributions of time or money to causes in which they believe are 42 percent more likely to be happy than people who refrain from giving.

Sociologist and happiness expert, Dr. Christine L. Carter, writes: “People 55 and older who volunteer at two or more organizations have an impressive 44 percent lower likelihood of dying [prematurely] — and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, habits like smoking, marital status, and many more. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church. It mean that volunteering is nearly as beneficial to our health as quitting smoking!”

It seems the Tanzanian people know something that others of us around the world are only beginning to discover: the spirit of ujamaa, of putting others first, is not only good for those that are helped; it’s also highly beneficial for those who help.

By lightening the load for others we lighten the load for ourselves as well.