Ryan Murphy

In the end, I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

Dear friends and loved ones: My birthday's coming up soon. If I were home, I'd be planning a stupid, expensive birthday party and you'd all be buying me gifts and bottles of wine. A cheaper, more lovely way to celebrate would be to make a donation to help a healer named Wayan Nuriyasih buy a house in Indonesia. She's a single mother. ln Bali, after a divorce, a woman gets nothing, not even her children. To gain custody of her daughter, Tutti, Wayan had to sell everything, even her bath mat, to pay for a lawyer. For years, they've moved from place to place. Each time, Wayan loses clientele and Tutti has to change schools. This little group of people in Bali have become my family. And we must take care of our families, wherever we find them. Today l saw Tutti playing with a blue tile she'd found in the road near a hotel construction site. She told me: Maybe if we have a house someday, it can have a pretty blue floor like this. When I was in Italy, I learned a word - It's "tutti" with double T, which in ltalian means "everybody." So that's the lesson, isn't it? When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti.

Hadn't I wanted this? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life. So why didn't I see myself in any of it? The only thing more impossible than staying… was leaving. I didn't want to hurt anybody, I wanted to slip quietly out the back door and not stop running until I reached Greenland.