[Lifestyle] The man who walked around the world: Tom Turcich on his seven-year search for the meaning of life

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At the age of 17, Tom Turcich had enjoyed a good life so far. He had wonderful parents, great friends, did well at school and was a gifted sportsman. But two things gnawed away at him: he thought he was too timid, and he was terrified of death. As a little boy, he would run down the stairs at night to check that his parents were still alive. At the age of 11, he’d lie in bed trying to simulate death so he could prepare for it. “I’d lose the sensation of my body,” he says, “and I would cover my ears and close my eyes so I couldn’t see and couldn’t hear, and I’d try to imagine what death was like. But then you can’t because you’re thinking. And there’s no thinking in death.”

Then, in 2006, his life was turned on its head. Turcich remembers every detail. He was in a car with three friends – Nick, Kevin and Fitz. Kevin was driving his father’s convertible. Back then, the boys used to hang out with a group of girls who were in the year below at school in Haddon Township, New Jersey. There was Shannon who was going out with Kevin, Ann Marie, Amanda and Jess. They’d grown up together, been friends since they were seven or eight, and they were as close as close can be.

The radio was blasting and the boys were having a good time when Kevin got a call from Shannon. He was distraught. “Kevin yelled for the music to be turned down and said, ‘Ann Marie has died.’” Sixteen-year-old Ann Marie had been killed in a jetski accident. They drove to Shannon’s house. “We sat in the front yard. There were maybe 10 of us, we were in a circle and everybody’s crying, unsure what to do. That night I lay in bed and I remember feeling this fog. It lasted about six months.”

Not only was Turcich petrified of death, he now knew he could die at any moment. Hardest of all was reconciling that it had happened to somebody like Ann Marie. “She was super-clever and exceptionally kind,” says Turcich. “Ann Marie was nice to the point it drove me crazy when I was younger because you could never get her to say anything mean. When we were hanging out I would prod her, trying to get her to say anything not generous.”

I thought: if Ann Marie can die, who is a better person than I am, then for sure I can go at the same time
He never succeeded. Not only did Turcich lose an amazing friend, but the accident left him questioning the meaning of life, and reinforced his fear of death. In short, he had the ultimate teenage existential crisis. “I thought: if Ann Marie can die, who is definitely a better student and better person than I am, then for sure I can go at the same time. That’s why it really hit home.”

Turcich went into a decline. “It brought all those unresolved questions flooding back. I thought: OK, you’ve got to solve this problem just to go about your life.” What was the problem? “That death can come at any time – arbitrarily and instantly. It was like, with this knowledge, how do you live? What do you do? How do you integrate that fact into your life?”

He was stuck for an answer. Then one day at college, the students watched Dead Poets Society, the film about a teacher called John Keating, played by Robin Williams, who inspires his students through his love of literature. Just as the movie’s seminal speech about seizing the day – carpe diem – and living an extraordinary life had a huge impact on the students in the movie, so it also did on Turcich.

He watched the film again and again, asking himself how best he could seize the day and make his life extraordinary. It struck him for the first time that he could shape his future rather than simply let it happen to him. From then on, he did just that. He won a place in the school swimming team, performed in a one-act play, returned to playing tennis and became school champion, all the time wearing the blue “AML” bracelet his school had designed as a tribute to Ann Marie Lynch. He finally conquered his passivity when he braved his first kiss, after three (nervous) dates with a girl called Britney.

That kiss proved to be an epiphany. “It was like the birth of the universe in my head,” he says. “All of a sudden I could see all the possibilities expanding out. It finally clicked: the actions you take really can affect your life.” Turcich decided he was going to seize the day by getting out of safe, friendly Haddon Township, with its po[CENSORED]tion of roughly 15,000, and seeing the world.

link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/11/the-man-who-walked-around-the-world-tom-turcich-seven-year-search-meaning-of-life