This book chronicles how John and his wife, Traca, decided to pause their life in Maine, rent out their house, quit their jobs and spend half a year volunteering around the world with their 2 teenage kids. They picked up and moved to Portugal for a year when their children were small, and Traca is a yogi and rather a free spirit, so it wasn't necessarily a wildly out-of-character decision for them, but it definitely took determination and some blind faith to get out the door. Their travels took them to a wildlife sanctuary on Costa Rica's Osa peninsula, a farm in New Zealand, an English teaching assignment in Thailand, an orphanage in India, and a Tibetan school in Ladakh (also India). One of the most powerful aspects of the book was the way it illustrated some of the many ways people all over the globe live lives of meaning and contentment with little to no material wealth. This excerpt about the village of Stok, India, is an example:
...Most people were farmers; they tended animals, grew crops, made their own clothes, used donkeys to carry heavy loads, bathed outside, cooked over a fire. Farm families worked together as a community. They shared a primitive watering system of surface irrigation ditches fed from glacial melt at the top of the town. Twice a day, a simple metal gate was lifted, releasing ice-cold water that flowed through every Stok farm on its way to the Indus below. This was an honor system, requiring farmers to self-police, blocking up their share of the flow with rags and rocks when their crops were sufficiently watered. As a result, Stok was much more lush than I expected. While most of Ladakh was a barren lunar landscape, Stok was alive with waving barley fields, groves of poplar trees bowing in unison, and gardens in full bloom.
Even the homes were more beautiful than I expected in a poor village. All of them were trimmed with ornate wooden moldings, carefully painted with deep red and yellow accents, with hand-carved doors flanked by welcome committees of sunflowers...It was a slow, ancient way of life, but it was still working. Everyone we met seemed to be content. There were not huge disparities of income or crushing poverty. In fact, from the moment we arrived, my family and I were greeted with kindness and generosity at every turn by people who had nothing by Western standards. So what was the secret? I wanted to know.
I talked about this with an old villager one afternoon. He was a farmer, dressed in plain, handmade clothes, and his face was deeply lined from years spent toiling in the intense high-altitude sun. He also spoke English. "What makes your village work so well?" I asked him.
The farmer thought about this for a long moment, looking off at the mountains. "We work together," he said- and I thought that was it. Then he smiled, his face wrinkling like an apple left in the sun. "It is simple," he said. "If you are rich, you are a failure."
"Why would you say that?" I wondered.
"Because," the man said, his smile widening, his wrinkles deepening, "that means you have not learned to share with other people."
The kids, not surprisingly, found their perspective altered when they came home. The son went on to study international development and the daughter went to medical school in the hopes of becoming a traveling doctor working in developing countries. John argues that volunteering in foreign places brings far more fulfillment than simply being a tourist because of the connections you make, and I have to say it's pretty compelling. The book is really making me think about the assumptions I make, perhaps unconsciously, about how to live my life, and reminding me that there is a world of options out there. Also- it makes me desperately want to see New Zealand! Loved this closing quote by Goethe, as well:
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have happened. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, rising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
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