I've believed for a long time that questions of meaning are crucial to motivation. I got to test that belief in an extraordinary way in 1994, when, as part of a peacebuilding mission to Cambodia, I was asked to help broker an armistice between the Khmer Rouge and the Government of Cambodia. As some of you may remember, the Khmer Rouge were an army of Maoist thugs that took over Cambodia in the mid-seventies, murdering a sixth of the population in the process. They were thrown out of power by the North Vietnamese in 1979, but had hung on in the jungles, terrorizing the countryside in the northwest, and blocking the reconstruction of the country as best they could.

Officially, US diplomats weren’t allowed by Congress to talk to the Khmer Rouge, but that law didn’t apply to former diplomats— and there was nothing to lose by having someone like me try to talk them into an armistice.

Joined by three others from Initiatives for Change, an international peacebuilding group, I met with a Khmer Rouge leader in Phnom Penh-a guy named Dith Sawaeng who look more like a college professor than a leader of an organization of murderous fanatics. He was middle-aged, dressed in a neat blue tunic and with shoes that had been shined a lot more recently than mine. Sawaeng immediately launched into the Khmer Rouge party line. It wasn’t true that the Khmer Rouge had butchered anyone, he told us. They were the real victims—only that morning, government warplanes had renewed bombing the jungle enclave where his family lived.

I knew this drill. I’d seen it at the United Nations from Russians, Bulgarians, Somalis… What you got was thirty relentless minutes of revolutionary diatribe, then the door. They insisted that you feel their pain; they didn’t care much about yours.

I interrupted him, and asked if he was worried about his family. He said of course he was. I asked him his age. Fifty-one, he said—which was the same as mine. He had a graduate degree in engineering, as did I. How had he got from engineering to the Khmer Rouge? He said that as a young man he’d gone to fight with the North Vietnamese against the Americans, and been recruited by the Khmer Rouge during the campaign against Hué, in the spring of 1972.

I stared at him, thinking of my encounter with Mr. Cuong. I told him that I had been in Hué in the spring of 1972, helping organize the defenses. “So, Mr. Graham,” he said with the hint of a smile “you and I have met before—over gunsights.” I leaned across the table and offered my hand. “Good to see you again,” I said.

The four of us made our armistice proposal, and he listened without comment. As we were walking back to the gate of the compound, however, he suddenly turned to me, looking at me intently. "Tell me," he said, "we both went to war as young men. How did you turn from making war to making peace?"

I told him that at a certain point I’d realized that nothing was more important to me than living a meaningful life, and that after a lot of dead ends, the only way I’d found to that kind of life was service. I told him that it had become far more important that “peacemaker” be carved on my tombstone than “warrior,” and I asked him if that wasn’t also true for him. His face sagged just for an instant and, almost in a whisper, he said something about not having the luxury to think about such things. Then he walked back into the house.

I'd love to finish this story by telling you that after that visit the Khmer Rouge laid down their arms. They didn't. Instead, they just faded away. In 1997, The New York Times published a list of what was left of the Khmer Rouge leadership, and this guy's name wasn't on it.