How I got to Tuoro sul Trasimeno, a town of about 4,000 people, is quite divine.

A few weeks before the trip, I was feeling overwhelmed. I was thinking of all these places to visit and had no clear idea for what to do. One night I was lying in bed, writing in my journal, my thoughts were spinning all over. So I said to the universe: I give up. You tell me where to go and I’ll do it.

The next morning, I checked my phone. I never do this right after waking. It was an impulse. I saw an email from a very old friend, her name is Meris. She was one of the first guests on my podcast, and she now runs a meditation business. She sends emails out every so often and I admit, I haven’t opened one. Yet for whatever reason, that morning, I opened her email. And it read:

“I am now offering a retreat in Umbria, Italy, a region that’s been called a spiritual vortex.”

Now, this is significant for two reasons: One, Umbria was subtly calling me to visit; and two, I was writing a post about Yelapa at the same time and researching spiritual vortexes. It was the exact language needed to reach me. So I sent an email to Meris and she wrote right back.

“Oh my gosh, I love it here. Instant friends. Surrounded by nature. Totally Italian. Also, if you’d like, you can rent my place for the month of July.”

There it was. I’d be going to Tuoro.

However, plan did change as I started traveling. Instead of staying for a month, I’d only go for a few weeks. And Meris’s place became available only for long-term rentals, so I’d stay with her friend Lenka instead, who not only offered a super-cute AirBnB but also connected me with Arber, the farmer I mentioned last post. And that evening, just like Lenka said, Arber showed up at my door at 6pm.

Arber, “Arbi,” is a 35-year-old farmer originally from Albania. He studied to become a musician, then his passion shifted into farming. “I took this job by choice,” he said. “I wanted to learn about the earth and take care of it, and then pass that knowledge along to my children.” Arbi’s been in Tuoro since he was 20. A few years after moving there, he saw an Italian woman walking down the street who stopped him in his tracks. “As soon as I saw her, I got shivers all over,” he said. That woman became his wife, and they now have three lovely children together.

Arbi uses no chemicals in his farming. He runs a clean, honest farm along with a few other workers. These guys work tirelessly, six days a week in the summer. When things are humming, they’re at it 10-11 hours per day, often seven days per week. They grow tomatoes, corn, okra, garlic, onions, olives, and many others (Arbi also produces and bottles his own olive oil, which I currently have tucked into my suitcase).

I’d be helping with the tomatoes. Arbi owns three farming properties, as well as an old hotel he’s now refurbishing into a multi-room guesthouse, an oil mill, and a home for his family. The property I’m working on though is at the base of Tuoro. So from my vantage point, I can look up and see the town — perched on a small plateau, surrounded by golden Umbrian fields and tall skinny cypress trees. It looked like Italy.

Tuoro itself is tiny. As one friend said, it’s a lovely place to live, so long as you have the option to leave. There is one main piazza in the center, with a grocery store, a butcher, a coffee shop, and two bars that face each other in the square. I came in to one bar, Bar Zucchini, and met Tim the Englishman, whom Meris told me about. By the end of that night, after having three drinks at that bar counter, I must have met half the men in town.

Tuoro sits right on the border of Tuscany and Umbria. So food-wise, we’re talking meat: salumi, cappocola, prosciutto, guanciale (bacon), mortadella, steak, pork, ribs. Also, some of the finest cheeses you can imagine. I’d go into the grocery store daily — mostly because I had a crush on the storekeeper — and one day asked to try her favorite meat. She sliced a piece of salami with finocchio, handed it over, and I about melted on the floor, right there on the spot. I bought meat and cheese every day for absurdly low prices — I mean absurd — and charcuterie’d to my heart’s delight.

For work, I’d wake up at 6am and would be at the field by 7. Felix and Marco, the other two workers, were already there. They arrived every day at 6am because by noon, it’s already too hot to work. Felix is Nigerian and Marco is Albanian. Both are around my age. Felix fortunately spoke English, Marco spoke Italian and Albanese, so Felix was our interpreter. Felix is tall and dark and speaks with intensity. He has dreams of moving to Milan to become a fashion designer. Marco’s a bit younger, 28, with a round, sturdy build and a very sweet disposition. He smokes a new cigarette about every 15 minutes. From the start, Marco was peppering me with questions. Do I prefer the countryside, or the city? Why did I come to Italy? What’s it like to live in New York? Then he found out I was a writer and he lit up. “A writer!” He exclaimed. Then he gestured around the farm. “What are you doing here then?!”

I told him: I’m a writer, which means I spend all day in my head. I wanted work where I can use my hands, where I can do something that’s physical.

“You want something that’s real,” Felix said.

“Exactly.”

We worked quietly for a bit. Then in the distance, I heard Marco relay another question to Felix.

“Harris,” Felix said. “He wants to know if you write about bees.”

“Bees?” I asked.

“Yes, bees.”

“Um, no. Not really,” I said. “Why?”

“He said because in the books, everything they say about bees is wrong.”

And so that night I’d go to Marco’s and learn the truth about bees.

*Marco — my bee-loving, chain-smoking, ever-curious Albanian friend.*

Marco lives in a two story home just outside the city center. I don’t know all who lives there, but about eight Albanians were sitting at a table outside when I walked up. They’re all originally from a tiny village in the Albanian mountains where they make everything by hand. I mean everything: clothes, bread, homes, tools. I remember hearing about living and working conditions in Albania from Roberto, my friend back in Lucca. He said farmers work all day and they earn about 5,000 lek (their currency). When they finish, they relax and buy a coffee for 2,000 lek (this is all Roberto’s estimation — not verified). “They are perfectly happy to do this,” he said. “All they need is that coffee and they are content with their day.”

Contentment was a message Felix preached to me as well: The importance of appreciating what you have. “If you can’t do that, if you cannot appreciate the bread on your table, the clothes you wear, the bed where you sleep, then you will go crazy.” Felix, after all, came from a completely different background than myself. As a two-year-old in Nigeria, he’d see his father get a gun held up to his head when it came time to pay bills. They grew up in a poor neighborhood, and Felix never went to school. “School teaches you how to be successful,” he said, “but the streets teach you how to be strong.”

The be-grateful-for-what-you-have mindset stuck with me, and I brought it up with my Dad when we spoke on the phone. “It’s this disease of more,” I preached and pleaded. “We’re so hooked on always getting more and we’re never happy with what we have.”

“Yes, and I agree,” he said pensively. “But to me, it goes two ways.”

“You have to remember where we come from,” he continued. “We’re American. We strive. So on one hand, yeah, we’re stressed and busy and we probably work too hard. But on the other, that restlessness leads to remarkable ingenuity. If we were just satisfied with what we had, we wouldn’t have gone to the moon. We wouldn’t have built the Hoover Dam. It’s who we are.”

I agreed. While I loved Felix’s message, and feel it’s deeply important to hold, I recognized what my Dad was saying as well. I’m American, it’s who I am and how I’m built. It’s in my blood. I’ve had the supreme luxury of having my basic needs met, which allows me to then dream beyond what I have. That restlessness is part of me, and it’s important to honor it, so long as it’s properly balanced. If so, it can propel you to lead a creative, fulfilling life.

*Arbi, in one of the rooms of his new property.*

Marco keeps nine boxes of bees in his backyard. He cares for them like they’re his children. He picked up one of the sheets of honey and examined it as hundreds of bees swarmed around him. Aren’t you scared of getting stung? I asked him earlier. “They’re very smart,” he said. “They know my scent. They know who I am and that I’m not harmful, that I’m here to feed them. Plus,” he added, “they know they’ll die if they sting me.”

I watched as Marco picked up sheet after sheet, thousands of bees swarming all around, and placed them back. It was about 8pm, the sun was setting. Warm light basked the tomato garden in their backyard. Marco knows the importance of bees for this world and that’s why he wants to raise as many of them as he can. “By this time next year, I’ll have 36 boxes,” he said. He loves bees because to him, they’re like humans. They understand order and collaboration. They are diligent and intelligent. “I watch the bees, I pay attention to them,” he said. “They are exactly like us.”

Afterward, he poured me a glass of grappa, their homemade whiskey. I have never felt such fire in my chest, just from one simple sip. It was an inferno. I forced the rest down politely and then walked home, buzzing like a bee.

After my first day of farming, I couldn’t move. I laid in bed with a sore back and raw hands and pushed myself to get out of bed. But there was an innately rewarding aspect to the work. When I got to that field, I knew exactly what I was doing and what purpose it served. I would clear the land for that plant, which would grow and sprout those tomatoes, for which that town right over there would cook and prepare and eat and enjoy in a beautiful dish to be shared with all their family. And it gave me the realization: A critical aspect of fulfilling work is being able to see the impact you’re creating.

It’s why corporate or government workers get so burnt out. They know their role, sure, but the impact is too abstract. It can be difficult to see their contribution. They are often too disconnected from their ecosystem. Then I thought of other jobs, where you see the impact, and how rewarding that can be: the teacher sees the light bulb come on in their students; the comedian hears the laughter in the audience; the electrician sees the power turn on. I said: To find fulfilling work, you must be able to know the impact you’re making.

*The golden fields of Tuscany — scootering through the countryside.*

***The orgasmic cheese of Piensa.*** *One night, I randomly chose to watch* Master of None, when he lives in Italy. Dev and Arthur scooter to this Tuscan town as it’s famous for its pecorino. I Google Mapped it and it was 45 minutes away. The cheese, I assure you, did not disappoint.

Day nine was a fun and lively morning. I was working with Felix and Marco, we’d be clearing a field. We met at 6am and the morning light was just beautiful. I’d brought my film camera that day and was taking some great pictures of Felix and Marco. Felix, who also wants to be a model, particular loved it.

But then, disaster struck.

We had a huge truck to help transport debris. We stopped at a field and I put my camera in my backpack, then laid it down to help Felix move some stuff. I put my phone in there too so I wouldn’t be distracted. I was carrying some wood when I saw Marco about to back the truck over my bag. “Aspetta! Aspetta!” I yelled (Wait!). He stopped the truck just inches away from it. But as I walked up, I saw the bag wedged down into the grass. He’d already driven over it.

I grabbed the bag and rushed away to the side. Felix and Marco crowded around. A banana was smushed and yellow gunk was everywhere. I then pulled out my phone — the screen was completely shattered, the phone cracked and curved. Felix gasped. I pulled out my film camera and took off the case. The lever worked fine. The machinery was intact. But when I took off the lens cap, the glass was busted. The shutter button didn’t work. I pressed and pressed in disbelief. For the phone, I could cope; but for the camera, I was devastated.

My film camera is my favorite possession. It’s one of the few objects for which I have a true emotional attachment. Not only does it take magical pictures, but even the means for which I acquired it was serendipitous. This camera gave me joy. When I was upset, I could just go for a walk, see a pretty sight, snap a picture and boom, my mood would shift. It was a joy machine. And now, it was broken.

I tried to contain my disappointment, but it was difficult. I kept thinking about the moment this morning when I decided to pack the camera. How I could have stashed the bag more responsibly. But when I looked over at Marco, I melted. The dude looked like he was about to start sobbing. He was looking down, his face beet red, he couldn’t look me in the eyes. He couldn’t even speak. I then felt more bad for him than I did about my camera. “Marco, tutto bene. It’s okay,” I told him. “I can buy a new phone. And we will fix the camera. It’s no big deal.”

“No, no…” he kept saying, looking down.

“Look, it’s not my dog, or my cat, or my child that you ran over,” I said. “It was my phone and my camera. These things can be replaced.”

Marco was despondent for half an hour. He called his Albanian friend, who’d take me to the electronics store 30 minutes away to buy a new phone. We made coffee and drank in silence. Felix and I then started talking and laughing, trying to lighten up the mood. As I was waiting for my ride, I put my arm around Marco. “Marco, it’s not your fault,” I told him. “It was irresponsible for me to leave my bag on the ground like that, I need to be more careful with my belongings. This was a good lesson for me. And fortunately it’s one that can be fixed.”

For the first time, he looked me in the eyes. “Okay,” he said. And finally, he smiled.

Everything was calm again, until a thought suddenly struck Felix. “But what about the pictures you took of us?!”

Toward the end of my trip, I met Fidalma.

Fidalma is a healer. She specializes in Reiki, massage, kinesiology, and other modalities of naturopathy, something not too common in Italy but growing steadily. We were connected through Meris and we finally got the chance to meet.

As soon as we met, everything in me relaxed. Every organ and muscle dissolved. I felt so comfortable, so grounded, so clear with her.

Fidalma is in her early 50s and has an especially fun and spunky personality. “Hello Haaarrrrrriiiisss,” her voice notes would begin. Fidalma’s father was a Formula One driver, and she previously worked for him and helped manage the team. This took her all over the world. She then followed the calling to go into healing. She’s not only been helping people unblock themselves in health, work, relationships, etc., but also mentoring other naturopaths to help get their practices off the ground.

We met in the morning and took a stroll around town. I told her my deal. I’m here because I’m kind of lost. I want to know where I want to live and what I want to do. I want to make my days count, and not to feel like time is wasting away.

“What I do,” she said, “is a conversation with your body. Not all bodies are open to it. Some aren’t ready to communicate. You might be consciously ready, but you need to be ready as well on a deeper level.”

“But if your body is open, it gives you answers,” Fidalma continued. "It tells you exactly what you need — what you’re doing right, and what needs to change. And it doesn’t lie. This helps you get back into your true path.”

“I’m very interested in this,” I said. “I like what I do, but I want to love it. I want to feel like my life is in flow.”

“Your first step is to understand your values and your goals,” she said. “That’s how you find fulfillment in your life.”

For example, she said, let’s say my value is morality. The number one thing for me is to respect the rules of society. But one night, I have an emergency and need to go to the hospital. The only available parking space is a handicapped one in front. I take it, knowing I’m breaking the rules, but also knowing it’s just for one night. “For one time, that’s okay,” said Fidalma. “But when people repeatedly go against their values, that’s how they lose sight of who they are.”

We had a session two days later. I don’t know the science behind kinesiology. Nor did I expect to be doing this in Italy, of all places. But when Fidalma put her hands on my feet, she started pointing out behaviors that were spot on. This wasn’t vague stuff that could apply to anyone — she was painting a portrait of my saboteurs.

I’ll spare you the details. You don’t need to know my patterns of self-sabotage. She pointed out the habits and foods that cloud my thinking. Then we talked about work. She ran me through a visualization exercise for the type of work my soul yearns for, and immediately, a very, very clear image came to mind: Teaching.

I lit up. I told her about how much I loved teaching after college, when I lived in Bangkok. And how I’ve always dreamed of running a creative writing class, something like my version of Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society. I told her how I went to a Reiki healer many years ago who revealed that, at my core, I am a teacher.

“Then you need to do it,” she said sternly.

“But it’s hard for me to accept,” I said. “I have a lot of ambition. And I like to exercise these other skills I have: writing, storytelling, interviewing.”

“This doesn’t have to be your daily job,” she said. “You can do it at nights, or on the weekends. But this is the activity that will feed your soul. And that’s the most important thing you need to do.”

We finished by talking about towns, and where I’d like to live next. I told her I like New York but don’t always feel super energized by living there.

“This isn’t something you solve with your mind,” Fidalma said. “When the answer comes, you feel it. It gets you excited. That will come to you once you stop trying so hard to find it.”

“Your only job for right now,” she concluded, “is to enjoy your trip in Italy.”

One of my favorite nights on my trip — eating with Arbi and his family on their property, with three of the sweetest kids on the planet. The boy took me by the hand and showed me every animal on the farm. The girl to my left asked the sweetest questions (“What types of funny voices can you make?”) and was fascinated that I’m a writer. She then ran into her house and came back with two folded up pieces of paper, each containing a story she’d written. I melted.

*A refreshing beer after my last day’s work*

Nights later, I left Tuoro. I was sad to leave my little paradise, and to say bye to Arbi, to Felix, to Marco, to Tim the Englishman, and to Fidalma. But it was time.

On the train, I read a New York Times interview with Krysta Tippett, who hosts the regular and ever-popular show, “On Being.” The interviewer asked her: What do you tell people who are struggling to find their calling?

“I think there are many callings in a life,” she said. “I want to liberate the idea of their calling from what they’re being paid to do for a living. Your calling may be doing something that gives you joy but that you’re never going to get paid for…it’s the things that amplify your best humanity. I don’t think I have to define that, because we all know intuitively what that is.”

Suddenly, things clicked into place. It was like I had these puzzle pieces and they finally fit together; they just needed one minor pivot. If what Fidalma said was true, then teaching truly could be one of my callings, and it’s not something I have to do for a living. I can find a job I find exciting and that utilizes my talents, and use my free time to teach.

I realized this as I rode the train from Tuoro back to Rome, and I exhaled with sweet deep relief. What a beautiful feeling, one I’ve felt for the first time in a very long time.

Clarity.

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