At work, I checked our morning schedule: a student discussing her linguistics research, a crew filming a documentary on the expanding carbon bubble, and a journalist writing about the US elections. I had a habit of holding my breath while concentrating, and I caught myself swaying with dizziness throughout the day, steadying myself with deep breaths. A half-hour before our last appointment, noted on our schedule as “Meeting with Sufi L. to discuss oppressed Sindh people, 30 minutes,” I looked up to see him, a middle-aged man with dark curly hair hanging his coat on our coat rack. Our office assistant, Glenn, ushered him back out to the hallway, where two mesh chairs near an emergency exit made up our waiting area.

When I asked him in, a young woman rose to join us, just as Noam created a logjam in the doorway, uttering a quick hello with a wave and a promise to return soon. To me he was Noam, but to most of the world he was Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist, US media and social critic, political activist, cognitive scientist, and author. Roxy, my cocker spaniel and our usual greeter, slept on her cozy bed under my desk during the commotion. At ten, she was beginning to lose her hearing.

Sufi L. introduced the woman, his student, by name, then introduced himself as “Sufi.” When I took his hand, or he took mine, something unexpected coursed through me. I felt a slow fall into a sense of peace, and for a moment it took some effort to keep my knees from buckling. He had gotten my attention.

Sufi’s eyes, like black almonds, drew me in, and I got it. He was indeed a Sufi, as in the practice of Sufism, which was, to my limited knowledge, a spiritual mysticism. Holding his hand, I felt serenity, nothingness. Nothingness except that he was clean-shaven. I would have expected a Sufi to have a beard. Everyone has told me to breathe more, beginning with the nurse who put me in an oxygen tent as a four-pound newborn. And it was the first thing Sufi—my Sufi (if only for this brief moment)—told me.

Noam met with presidents, activists, prime ministers, and ambassadors. He had discussions with mathematicians, mill workers, priests, physicists, teachers, and performers. These were his people. My, or more accurately our, people were those whose correspondence, a few of the thousand communications we received each week, he asked me to intercept because I could better answer their questions, or to keep him from drowning in the loquaciousness of the more needy folks and the sycophants. Many of the latter were bright and well-meaning souls convinced that his agenda fit theirs, so they could organize themselves if only they had his help. He would often hand me a letter and say, “Acknowledge that we’ve read it, and say I’m away. Be sure to be kind.” In this way, they became our/my people. It had been a while since I’d spent time with one of his.

“The energy around you is calm,” I said as I led them into Noam’s office, where they remained standing to take in the photographs, posters, and walls of books.

His student nodded. “I’ve been working with him for only a week, and I have felt this too.” Sufi’s smile had the pureness of a newborn baby’s. I’m a lousy meditator, a busy, thinking meditator, but in his presence, I could have listened to the silence.

“Can you feel my frenetic energy?” I asked.

“Yes, I can.” Sufi wasn’t mincing words. “You need to breathe more.” There it was—again. I hadn’t mastered the art of breathing while thinking. “Breathe, and stay awake. Be aware of what happens between the breaths. That is where all of life and death is.” I wanted to sit in a candlelit room and talk for hours with this man, my Sufi.

I filled two cups with water, and returned to get our visitors settled. When I handed Sufi a cup, he said, “We feel it in here.”

“What do you feel?” I asked, handing the other cup to his student.

“We feel truth. Truth and goodness.” Sufi found my eyes, his face softening. “This is your bliss. You were born to do this work.” His words felt powerful and true, but also confusing. I didn’t want to pierce his spiritual aura with my self-conscious questioning, but I had to ask.

“Do you mean I was born to work here, in this office, with Professor Chomsky?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at his student. What did he know that I didn’t? I had often asked myself why I’d chosen to stay when it wasn’t my plan. I liked my job, and at times I loved it, but to say I was born to do it, that it was my bliss, was a whole other thing.

“When you look back on your time here, there will be no regrets,” he said. Had he somehow heard my doubts about the choices I’d made? Had I fallen into a pot of spiritual gold, or into a pile of something quite different? I tried to separate truth from magical thinking in my life, but I wanted to believe him. I needed reassurance that I was spending my days in a meaningful way, because even now, almost two decades after taking this job with the intention of moving on, I questioned my decision to spend my days furthering someone else’s agenda. Had I sold out, kidding myself in the name of ego, or laziness, into thinking that managing his office and “helping greatness,” as some put it, was enough? Was this what I was born to do, or could I have better reached my potential as a therapist, as I had planned?