O - Os Little Guide to Finding Your True Purpose

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Were all called. If youre here breathing, you have a contribution to make to our human community. The real work of your life is to figure out your functionyour part in the wholeas soon as possible, and then get about the business of fulfilling it as only you can.

O PRAH W INFREY

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you. This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.

R UMI

I used to yearn for a wake-up call. I thought often about an acquaintance who took a skydiving class; when her parachute didnt open, she fell more than a mile, crashing into a field. Miraculously, she lived. And as soon as her bones healed, she changed her entire life: divorced her husband, moved with her children to a house down the road, and let herself pursue what she really wanted. Of course, I didnt want the mile-long fall (or the divorce), but I did want this womans visceral understanding that life is short and mustnt be wasted.

Even after I was struck by a car and sent flying four feet through the air, though, I wasnt shocked into transformation. I picked myself up, limped home, and continued to ignore a certain unhappiness in my marriage. I doggedly did my work and didnt confront problems.

A few years later, when my sister, who had been ill for decades with multiple sclerosis, passed away, I felt surprisingly little: Id been saying good-bye to her for a long, long time.

But at the funeral home something happened. Come here, the rabbi said, drawing my family into a side room. My glance fell on a simple pine box. Naturally, there are coffins in funeral homes , I thoughtthen realized it must be Anitas. It was so small, considering the large woman shed become. So bare. Thats all there is, it seemed to say. My heart flew out of meoh, Anita! I suddenly missed the girl shed been, the energetic hiker who sang Girl Scout songs and sipped Tab, who folded newspapers into admirals hats so we could pretend to be adventurers. I even missed the wheelchair-bound woman who loved chocolate cake although someone had to feed it to her.

At the cemetery, in accordance with Jewish tradition, my father and brothers threw spades full of dirt onto the coffinI demurredand then the workmen filled the grave. It struck me as barbaric and mind-boggling to stand there while they actually buried Anita.

In the car going home, I sat beside my mother. Life is a dream, she said. My mother used to tell me that.

A mourning candle marked with a Jewish star flickered on my stove. As the days passed, I wondered if it was possible to return to the way Id lived: drifting. I recalled how once, when Anita was already housebound, Id asked what she was up to. She told me shed just ordered a box of pens with the inscription This is the day which the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.

At the end of seven days, Orthodox Jews blow the candle out. For me, it felt like blowing out Anitas own soul, like releasing her to her new world and being expelled back to the land of the living. I took a slow walk around my Brooklyn block, and saw for the first time that even the street of throbbing, filthy diesel trucks held something sacred.

Ordinary life subsumed me after that, but only up to a point. Soon I sat my husband down and told him about the hollow places in our marriageand our relationship gained energy; the life force flowed back in. I became more nurturing of my writing students and made it a higher priority to spend time with my parents.

What a relief to hear a wake-up call at last! I only wish it hadnt taken the loss of my sister to rouse me. How much better to discover lifes evanescence without the parachute failure or other calamity. Why wait for a near-death experience when life itself is a near-death experience? I wish someone had told me: Youre allowed to hear the call even if the crisis happened to someone else. Life is always a risk, never a possession. Anita, who contemplated ultimate things, could have told me that. Baby, I can hear her say, when its over, its over. This is it, my pet pachooch! Better live in a way that inspires rejoicing.

It was one of the longest trips of my life. On the first leg of the three-plane jaunt, the flight was delayed two hours, leaving me with a mere ten minutes to dash to the second plane. When I arrived at the third airport, two people ran through the security checkpoint, resulting in the airports being shut down for hours. As I boarded the final plane, a noisy propper, I hit my forehead so hard that I nearly passed out, acquiring a fist-sized bump in the process. The worst part of the trip, however, was that I didnt want to be on it. An acquaintance had asked me to give a reading at her school during an extremely busy time of the year, and to make her happy, I had said yes.

A week before the trip, I called the school to check on the travel arrangements and was told that I was expected to make them myself and would be reimbursed later. I was tempted to book a first-class ticket on a first-rate airline, but because my acquaintances school was low on funds, I got a discount ticket on the Internet, which sent me on that patchwork of flights.

When I finally reached her city, I was hungry and exhausted. Still, I proceeded to make small talk with my hostess on the hour-long car ride to my hotel. She was very cheerful, and between questions about everything from the color of my childhood house to my college English courses, she laid out the next days heavy schedule of morning assemblies and afternoon classroom visitswhich had not been part of our original agreement.

Not wanting to appear disagreeable, I bit my tongue and whispered, Fine. Meanwhile I could feel the bump on my forehead growing bigger and bigger, like Pinocchios nose rising after he told a lie.

When I arrived at the hotel, in order to bury my well-concealed frustration, I consumed a total of fifteen chocolate hearts, which had been decoratively placed around the room. The next day, however, the chocolate did nothing to sweeten my disposition or to make the bump on my forehead, which overnight had turned black and blue, go away. I did the best I could to conceal the swelling with makeup, but by the time I left the hotel room, what I often jokingly refer to as my wide and ample four-head was more like a five-head. Nevertheless, I addressed the morning assemblies and then trudged through the back-to-back afternoon classes, praying I wouldnt faint from exhaustion or lose my voice.

The truth is, had I really wanted to be on this trip, I would have happily brushed off the consecutive presentations and my aching head as yet another series of challenges to be overcome in my constant book-related travels. However, since I was putting myself through this particular experience more out of obligation than desire, I felt doubly abused, by both this person and myself. There were so many other things I could have been doing. I could have been writing. I could have been sleeping. I could have been lunching with my beloved. I could have been playing with my niece and nephew. I could have been consoling a dear friend who had recently lost her mother.