I met the ninety-three-year-old Pamela Murray on a train one morning in June, and sitting next to her was an hour I’ll never forget.

I remember that when she sat down, I spent five solid minutes thinking about whether or not to take out my headphones and say hello. I wanted to talk to more Englanders before I left London, but I thought it would be kind of odd to suddenly say “Good morning!” so long after she’d settled in.

I had a strong feeling that I needed to talk to this woman, though, so I stopped my music and introduced myself. She beamed, said that her name was Pamela, and off we went.

She told me her life story, right up to the present in which she was on a weekend trip with her son. They were headed to a small town several stops before mine, and she told me how she loved to travel but could only manage smaller trips nowadays.

Back when she first started, she’d gone all over the world (loved Las Vegas, by the way). I was so enthralled by the places that she described to me, but traveling was only the beginning of her story.

She felt inclined to explore Earth’s beauty because she had seen its worst evil. Pamela was a teenager when her parents asked if she and her sisters wanted to stay in London or evacuate at the beginning of World War II. As a family, they agreed to stay and help as civilian aids to the military.

The girls spent their time sewing uniforms for soldiers and anticipating bombs being dropped on their city during the night. When her family eventually left London, they all went separate ways; Pamela had to go to Germany. She lived there for four years over the course of the war, continuing to aid the British military as a civilian.

After that, she returned to London and worked as an ambassador for the city until she was offered a job in a hospital. She also founded an entire movement to help address the needs that her mentally ill son had, and even lobbied in Parliament for solutions to the problems that she — and many other caretakers — were having. She retired in her sixties, after her husband died.

She told me that they had been married for thirty-six years, and she had been widowed for thirty-two now. I asked if she missed him; she said sure, but she also liked her independence. “Being married is fine,” she said, “but not being married is fine, too.

People just need to do their own thing. You need to go places, see other cultures, learn about other people.” She continued, saying that it’s important to see how different people live so that you can broaden your understanding of humanity and respect differences.

That’s when she started telling me about her travels. After retiring, she went to China, Russia, India, all over Europe and America and many other places. She told me about how she liked New York and Miami, but especially Las Vegas with all its activity and bright lights.

I asked why she loved traveling so much, even now, even when she couldn’t make more than a two-hour train ride over the weekend. She said that after what she had seen during the war, she wanted to “obliterate” her horrible memories and replace them with beautiful ones.

I realized as I watched her shuffle into the train station from my seat, how much I wanted to live a life as rich as hers. I wanted to be able to tell a stranger my story and have them wonder how I’d managed to fit so much life into one short existence.

That’s why I got my first tattoo, a W, tattooed a week later. The W means something on its own, but when I look at the letter, it’s upside-down — an M, for Murray. I see it and remember to chase after life with a vengeance, to fill my time on Earth with as many experiences as possible, so that I might be like Pamela when I’m ninety-three.