Читать книгу Time is Cows: Timeless Wisdom of the Maasai - Tanya Pergola Ph.D. - Страница 5

I had a phone in my hand and was about to call and cancel my booking with the American travel company that was organizing my journey to Tanzania—the trip that would take me to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, on a wildlife safari, and then to the exotic island of Zanzibar. Lately I had become afraid that I just didn’t have the energy to get myself half way around the world and up a 19,340 foot mountain.

I was not well—on all levels, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For almost two years, I gradually had been getting sicker. When my father died in 1997, I had failed to truly grieve his loss in my life. Instead, I followed a rather more common American strategy by filling the void I felt with intensive career-focused work, completing my doctoral thesis while working full-time as a consultant for a start-up firm that was capitalizing on Americans’ rising interest in holistic health and wellness.

Imagine the irony: my job was to help companies capitalize on people’s growing fascination with eating and living more healthfully, and in the process I was making myself less and less well. Yet even though I was truly exhausted and about to call and cancel my trip, I ultimately hesitated and put down the phone. I don’t know why.

A few days later, however, the travel company called me, explaining that a large family group had cancelled its booking, meaning that the journey I was scheduled to be part of would have to be cancelled. But the travel consultant wondered whether I would be interested in joining another group, one scheduled to depart for Tanzania a few weeks after the original date of my booking.

I considered: this was my chance to get out of the whole thing and not lose a dime in deposits, because the cancellation wasn’t my fault. But instead of doing exactly that, I astonished myself by merrily announcing, “Sure! No problem, sign me up for the later departure.”

In retrospect, it’s clear: something beyond my rational mind led my exhausted self to the airplane that ferried me to East Africa for the first time. Whatever it was, I am blessed that I can now share the story. It’s a story that goes far beyond the stark headlines of disease, death, conflict, and poverty in Africa. It’s a tale, rather, about life, wellness, co-creation, and riches. I received a second Ph.D. in Tanzania—but this one did not involve reading books or taking classes or writing a dissertation.

Yet it did involve many profound lessons and an array of very difficult tests—trials of the mind as well as of the heart.