“Me? Well, I’m not sure, I don’t really have a reason,” I said.

“Sometimes not knowing is the hardest,” Yaron replied softly, and the group nodded in agreement. At the end of the session Yaron handed me a questionnaire with all kinds of random questions, like what my hobbies were and whether I was more of a rural type or city boy. He said it would help them tailor the program to my specific needs. I asked him about the search days, but he just gave me a note with an address on it—26 HaBrosh Street, Petah Tikva. He told me that’s where I needed to go and adamantly argued that any further information would just detract from the experience. He stressed that it wasn’t a simple process, and because they didn’t want me to give up midway, they had assigned Talia as my sponsor—a program alumna just a year older than me.

3.

“WHAT ARE YOU looking for?” she asked me during our first meeting, at a park opposite the Meaning of Life Ltd. offices, considering me with her big brown eyes.

“I don’t really know,” I said. “But it’s not that I’m depressed or anything, my life is pretty much okay.”

“I hate it when people think that.”

“Think what?”

“That you have to be either a nutjob or a philosopher to want to find true meaning,” she said, and brushed her hand over her neck. “Walking around this world without knowing why is basically living with a giant hole in your soul. The fact that everyone else ignores it doesn’t mean you have to as well.”

Talia told me how stuck she had felt until she arrived at the Meaning of Life Ltd., describing things I was certain existed only in my head until that moment.

“If it weren’t for the company, I’d be spending the next seventy years without knowing my true calling in life is to find a cure for cancer.” She told me that since coming to that realization, life had become much simpler. She had completed her GED and a biology research paper, and even received the Minister of Education’s excellence award. Based on her research, she was invited to attend a young scientists conference in London, where she met her boyfriend, Christopher, a guy from Denmark, who had recently moved to Congo for a year of volunteer work. “We can’t say anything for certain yet, but it looks like Chris and I have discovered the gene that causes skin cancer. If our assumptions are correct, it might pave the way for a new drug that could save tens of thousands of people a year.”

“I can only imagine how that feels, walking around knowing you’ve saved so many lives,” I said, without trying to hide my overwhelming jealousy. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”