“People Are Basically Selfish”

In the United States, my story about planting fruit trees in India fell mostly on deaf ears. 

People would point out that fund-raising in the U.S. was bound to be difficult because Americans seemed to have no emotional bond with India. Whenever I was confronted with the idea that this project was meant for India, I felt as if I were in a dream, shouting at the top of my lungs, but no one could hear me. 

I perceived that the sole reason for my existence was to communicate the vision: All humanity is one body. If one part suffers, the whole body is affected. Cancer in one part of the body will result in the death of the entire body. A large part of humanity is suffering an acute pain of hunger. We have the technology, know-how, and goodwill to eradicate this suffering. I was creating a model of just one of the ways it could be tackled. My work was no different than a laboratory researching a cure for cancer. That cure would not only benefit people in the city where the research was being done, but all of humanity.

The name Trees for Life came to a friend in deep meditation. It was as if somebody was telling her to tell us, and so we accepted the name as a gift. Although we incorporated in 1984, I was doing a lot of work many months before that. I was contacting people and telling anyone who would listen the story about the holy man blessing the first lemon trees. No one escaped. I went to one school after another. I went to the newspaper. I was stirring up dust all over. Some friends distanced themselves from me. Very few donations were coming in. 

At first, I worked from our home. My office was the kitchen table. Soon all areas of the house were taken over.

“This won’t do,” Treva said. “You need to have an office.” 

She mentioned it to the minister of her church. The church board agreed to give us one room in the church for our office. It didn’t have much furniture, just a table and a few chairs.

I would leave the house at nine in the morning and work until 10 p.m. Treva would call and say, “Are you going to come home?” There was so much work to do and it was just me. 

One day my friend Bob stopped by the office. He had invested $200 in stock in a business I started when I first arrived in Wichita in 1958, and he had been a staunch supporter ever since. Now he came to talk some sense into me. 

“You have to get out of this,” he said.

He told me people in America were really not interested in the suffering of others in faraway lands. 

“You have to remember, people are basically selfish,” he said.

Bob, who was about 20 years older than I, had been my friend, philosopher, and guide since I came to America. He told me he was not going to leave my office until he could get a promise from me to give up on my project. Bob settled himself into the chair opposite me and lit his pipe–an indication he was going to stay for some time. There would be no escaping him today. He drove home the point that I had experimented with the idea long enough, and there was ample proof people would not support the idea. He spoke of my suffering wife, my children, and my future. Bob knew me well. He knew all my hot buttons and pressed them relentlessly. I could not come up with a single word to respond because I knew he was correct on all counts. I sat there in awe of Bob’s sensitivity and the fact he was sticking his neck out to take me off the hook of my predicament. Yet, for some reason, I was not ready to give up. Defenseless, I had no answers. I looked down at the floor most of the time, on the verge of tears.

As he was speaking, two women walked into our office. They said they were lost and asked if we knew a certain address. I told them it didn’t sound familiar. They were chatty souls. They informed us that one of them was from out of town and her local friend was driving her around Wichita. They inquired about Trees for Life. They had never heard of it. I was feeling beaten up and ashamed from Bob’s lecture and was in no mood to have the women there. I gave them a quick, two-sentence explanation. 

“Is that so?” the out-of-towner exclaimed, still out of breath from climbing the stairs. Then she pulled out some wrinkled one-dollar bills from her purse. The other woman, Mary, dug into the side pockets of her skirt and did the same. Together they handed me $36. 

I looked at those women. They were middle-aged and appeared absolutely ordinary. It was obvious to both me and Bob that the gift was sacrificial.

The woman smiled as I tried to hold back my tears. Like me, Bob was experiencing something special. His disbelief was made obvious by his gaping mouth and wide eyes.

The atmosphere in the room had suddenly changed. Now there was no talk. Something beyond words had taken place, even in these women. I saw them walk backward out of the room, as I stood there stunned, holding the bills in the palms of my outstretched hands. 

Oh, my gosh, I have to give them a receipt, I thought, and ran down the stairs after them. Not enough time had passed for them to have left by car. Outside the building, I looked in all directions. There was no sign of a car or the two women.

When I walked back into the room, the look on Bob’s face showed amazement, his eyes staring in disbelief. During the next several minutes neither of us spoke. Quietly, Bob picked up his things.

“You will make it,” he said, and left the office.

I sat there realizing I must have entered another zone of reality. I wondered if those two women were an apparition.

I hit emotional lows several more times after that, but I was never as down as I had been before these visitors arrived. They had changed my reality forever. And as for Bob, his characterization of human nature changed for the rest of his life. 

I never saw those two women again.