A man who lives in the nearby town of Salem emailed me and asked if he could come by the farmhouse and drop off some mittens for the Mansion residents; his name is Don, and he read on my blog that they needed mittens and paint canvases.

He had some of those to bring.

He wasn’t planning on seeing me, but I was outside getting the mail when he pulled up.

I introduced myself, and we started talking. I’ve never lost the reporter instinct for pulling a story out of people, and I had this sixth sense that he had a good one.

He told me he moved to Salem shortly after the pandemic eased. He was a doctor in New York City, and the pandemic had exhausted and burned him out.

He did save a lot of lives, and he did see a lot of deaths.

The experience transformed him. He left his practice, left New York, bought an old farmhouse, and moved upstate to the country.

He was burning out as a doctor before and after the worst days of the pandemic.

Long hours, pressure and tension, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, angry and paranoid patients, conspiracy theories and politics,  the crushing patient load kept him from getting to know his patients.

“Ironically,” he said, “working in those hospitals during the pandemic was the best time I ever had as a doctor. It was grueling and wrenching, but you can be a doctor as you hoped and wanted to be in a crisis. I mattered.”

I realized I was talking to a member of my tribe; I call them the Spiritual Refugees, people who choose to live outside that pressure of living for money or power.

These are people with dreams and passions who find themselves outsiders,  refugees in the land of the Corporate Nation, the global economy, the bottom-line world, a world of greed, insecurity, instability, and fear.

There is little room for spirituality in this kingdom. It is rarely in the news, pushed to the very edges of our lives.

“It’s straightforward,” Don said. “I became a doctor because I wanted to help people. Now I am. I’m doing what I was meant to do.” He is helping the neediest and most vulnerable.

Spiritual Refugees, like everyone else,  are taught from birth to seek an identity with power, status, and money, but rarely about how to live life in a meaningful and satisfying way.

They reject that life and seek to build a different one, which leaves them outsiders in a vast system that pushes spirituality, generosity, empathy, and compassion aside.

Don had done everything he was taught to do – worked hard, got into Yale, paid off $150,000 in student debt, bought a big house and a boat, and socked money away for retirement. He was considered a great success.

The pandemic woke him up somewhat brutally.

He decided to abandon what he had been taught to want and fear and instead live the life he wanted.

Now, he visits nursing homes and homes for the emotionally and intellectually, and physically disabled and sings songs to them with his guitar, and helps out when there are minor medical problems.

There is little money to pay him well, or sometimes, at all.

Our society does not value people like Don because there is no money, boats, big houses, or fat IRAs in the world of the giving. Healthcare and social workers are among the lowest-paid people in America.

Many make less than McDonald’s workers.

But if you hang around them long enough, you will find they are most often happy in their work and lives.

Following my calling was the best and most spiritual decision I ever made.

Don paid off those loans), and has nothing left in his IRA, and he and his wife have never been happier. They spend precious time together and with their daughter, an only child.

He and I got to talking, and I offered my theory that perhaps it is only age that teaches that “success,” as we have been taught, only goes so far and not very high. It seemed to me that the more successful I got, the poorer the quality of my life.

He and I shared the same experience.

Helping people makes us happy.

Success is a double-edged sword, Don agreed. We all want it, but we don’t always know what to do with it, and it doesn’t lift the heart the way it’s supposed to.

I wonder if age is the only natural antidote to the personal destruction of the lives we are taught to live. The news teaches us all that anger, hatred, dysfunction, and disconnection every day.

We can reflect on our lives and think about them as we age. We have a perspective that comes with age.

We recognize the finite nature of time and realize what we were never taught –  that we don’t live forever, and time is running out if we wish to live the lives we want.

I call our obsessions and flaws the “bad genes”  – anger, hatred, envy, pride –  they seem to subside to the point where we can see what we are and want to be.

It was almost too late for me; the train was getting ready to leave the station.

I wanted to be religious in a nonconventional way, not through dogma and tradition, but through a spiritual prism.

Don and I both discovered that the life we were taught to live was theirs, not ours. Our society is now almost spiritual. Hatred and lies, and greed have become a faith.

“Good luck, brother,” I said to Don, “you are living your life.”

We shook hands. I patted him on the shoulder. I may never see Don again; we made no plans for lunch, although we exchanged emails.

We both agreed that if we ever felt the need, we should reach out to the other. He’s someone I wouldn’t hesitate to call.