I guess as a child I was always thinking about what profession I was going to have.

My father was interested in me inheriting his dental practice and my mother wanted me to be a pharmacist so I would not have to move too much away from home.

However, I knew that my father had been lured by his aunt to trade an engineering profession for a maxillofacial doctor, and I wanted to take my own decision.

My mother had taken courses in psychology, but she was not overly impressed with what she learned. She thought that what they told her about depression was just another name for being idle or bored. We were never bored individually or as a family.

My parents loved to take short trips during the weekends or explore our beautiful forest or parks on the Santa Lucia (2063 ft) or Cerro San Cristóbal (2887 ft) hills in Santiago.

At home, my mother was always sewing or knitting. She carefully and patiently taught me how to crochet, knit with palillos (knitting needles), tat with a shuttle that included a bobbin, sew seams on skirts, pants, coats, dresses, and even repair holes or other defects in all kinds of clothes. I even learned to make dresses and pants following her sewing book with all kinds of patterns.

She also took me to visit her aunt Ester, a high society famous seamstress who measured your dress or coat by tearing the fabric by hand, and after placing different pieces on your body, put them together with long pins adorned with pearls.

I was amazed at how fast she worked. We would leave for a week or so and then go back to try the garment. She would make some adjustments if needed, but usually they were perfect at the first try.

These professions did not seem to call me at all.

Since I loved animals the profession that attracted me more was veterinary. I pursued the idea in my mind until I met Mario, a veterinary student, who told me that some time you must kill dogs or cats and even sheep or cows. I could not stand that idea. So, my interests switched to architecture.

Soon I learned that I needed to know and apply mathematics, which I was not very friendly with, and also have legal knowledge related to permissions, which I knew in Chile were hard to get without relying on people you knew in the right places.

So, I decided to follow my Literature Academy leader’s advice in high school, and study journalism.

Since going to a Catholic school had been a sad experience and going to church did not really teach me anything about God, Jesus or faith, I became interested in Eastern religions and new age.

To start with, our history professor at the school of journalism gave us a wonderful and professionally researched view of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.

I carefully read Siddhartha, the book by Hermann Hesse about the Gautama Buddha. The young man in the novel is seeking enlightenment and understanding of life’s meaning.

I read psychology and philosophy books by Aldred Adler, Sigmund Freud, Carl Young, and Somerset Maugham. Read Aristoteles, Plato, Cicero, Machiavelli, Hume, Rousseau, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Locke, Montaigne, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Kierkegaard, Russell, Hegel, Marx, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kant, and other classics.

I was fascinated by the concepts of Taoism and Confucianism. Also, by the reincarnation beliefs in Hinduism. By the confusing psychological theories that attribute everything to sex or the struggles of feeling inferior and not “belonging” to society or family or whatever.

I read about the New Age people following different gurus that made meditation the center of everything. Why was “empty your mind” supposed to be a sign of spirituality?

I read Darwin’s theory about evolution and found them unfounded and based on prejudices and false personal and misinterpreted experiences. After all, one of my ancestors had met him when he was in Chile.

But everything I read and learned felt empty or as a desperate need of some people to justify their actions without answering to anybody. The problem was submitting to something so crazy as an image of Budha, venerated in so many countries in the East; or submitting to an anti-feminist, planning to dominate the world, and going to heaven to have pleasure with virgins (the religion based on the beliefs of Mohamed in Islam), or submitting to a God that demanded the sacrifice of millions and millions of animals to pay for your sins. (At that time, I did not know that Jewish believers stopped sacrificing animals in 70 DC when the Roman army destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the place where sacrifices were offered.)

Obviously, the answer for my purpose was yet to come. Meanwhile I learned to read cards, interpret the lines in the hands, read the Tarot, and I even used a Ouija board while living at a dorm at the University of Georgia.

It all was going to change after I finished my PhD studies and obtained my title. I was working on an interesting educational project when I met a woman who lent me an interesting book, “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. After that, I started to read the Bible and then got totally convicted by Psalm 139:
²³ Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my anxious thoughts;
²⁴ And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.

It took many years, in fact 40 years, to find my purpose.

Christ was my only answer, and my only purpose. I have been found and wonderfully made by God since my beginning. All I needed was to understand it and be guided by the Holy Spirit for the rest of my life. Be myself in Jesus not in “me”.