Later that afternoon, Jules was sitting in his overstuffed, gray chair, watching a documentary on blindness. It was based on a series of audio recordings by a man named John Hull. One line stayed with Jules. He paused the film and wrote it down in his notebook. “Blindness is the borderland between dreams and memory.” The man recalled trying to bring back the memory of specific photographs of his children, who were eight-years-old and six months when he lost his sight completely. He explained how he slowly lost the mental images of the photographs, years after having seen them. Jules noticed tears forming at the corner of his eyelids. One cascaded slowly down his cheek, through a thicket of stubble, landing on the notebook paper.
So many images formed and forgotten over the days and nights of a life. Only the most visceral or emotional, the most surprising or perplexing, the most terrifying or tragic, stayed with us, thought Jules.
Jules closed the laptop. It was an hour or so before dinner. He thought about the morning with Charlie. The way in which Charlie exuded a cathartic energy, as if emotional tensions or life’s endless array of obstacles never stayed within his mind or body, but were taken in and released on a daily basis. As if his grounding and sense of gratitude at the wonder of being alive usually won out over the pain of loss, of absence, of doubt, of shame, or of uncertainty at the future. As if Charlie had never not known where he was going. Or as if Charlie was never attached to a specific destination, only the joy of the ride itself.
Jules was attracted to this, probably because he’d never been able to experience life in such a consistently present way. This was what the Buddhist philosophers called finding enlightenment. It was what grief counselors called finding peace. This was what believers called finding god and what athletes called finding the zone.
Jules occasionally found it in writing. His artist friends called it creative flow. These were the most peaceful and riveting moments of life. The way in which fascination held Jules’ concentration in a complete way, launching him outside of his daily existence. These moments were fleeting. The attempt to find flow needed structure and planning. While navigating the crunch of work, parenting and his own psyche, Jules struggled to find the time. As Reva became a teenager and Jules a single parent, he began finding more moments. Two hours was ideal. Ninety minutes was enough. With enough practice and time, Jules found himself in a receptive mode.
When Jules’ mind wasn’t in a flow state, the present proved elusive. While getting through busy work weeks and family life with Lisa and Reva, he often found himself anticipating the end of the night, when he could put his feet up on the couch. Jules was often stuck in the future, attempting to solve problems, removing items from the list of endless tasks. What meeting was coming up? The groceries. The yardwork.
Years later, he often found himself engulfed by the past. People who’d drifted away. Friends who died. Childhood memories of Sam and Morty. Thoughts of his mom and dad. Now those memories played like old films on a projector. Sam, at the dinner table, explaining some complicated political situation in Eastern Europe. Sam’s image fading out as he spoke, seeing only Nina’s back while she chopped vegetables at the counter. His father, Philip, coming into the kitchen looking haggard after a long day. Then Morty entering, sitting down and telling them all about a classmate who tried to mock the teacher, jumping up on the teacher’s desk and jumping off to escape, breaking his ankle. The family laughing. The memory fading. Morty, flickering from view. Young Jules was always observing everyone, rarely speaking.
Jules wrote about friendships in a collection of short stories that only a dozen of his friends read. He’d self-published the collection in 2005, working on the stories for his first two years after retirement. The themes woven into the stories often came back to the idea of trust and the need to give others the benefit of the doubt.
Jules prefaced the collection by telling his friends these stories were fictional—they shouldn’t conclude he was writing about any one of them in particular. The friends he’d lost wouldn’t receive the book anyway. In truth, each story of connection included a character who was an amalgamation of a few friends or imagined friendships.
Jules recognized how easy it was to have low standards and keep one’s expectations to a minimum. He’d seen how emotionally-guarded or traumatized people often did this. No expectations meant no disappointment. It also meant a life of monotone. Shades of black, white and gray. The need to maintain a rigid adherence to logic and rationality as a means of coping with life’s uncertainties and other humans in general.
Jules noted how much more complicated and rewarding life became when he continued to care intensely about his friends. Yet some of them drifted into a middle-aged malaise or accepted auto-pilot as their mode of operating, at least Monday thru Friday.
Over time, Jules accepted that people fail from time to time. He’d gradually learned how important it was to keep in mind the benefit of the doubt. There were countless reasons people couldn’t prioritize friendships and connections. Family and work obligations. Distractions. Addictions. Fear of letting others down. The list of reasons why a person didn’t respond to a phone call, an email, or now a text was long, painful and exhausting to consider.
Jules imagined life in a village of about 50 people, without electricity, the internet or the clock. Maybe 200 years ago. Most of the modern world’s inhabitants had no way of conceiving of the demands of that time. Cold, hungry, exhausting and short. What would’ve it felt like to trust a circle of 50 humans? To know them intimately, depend on them, and live with them for the majority of your cold, hungry and short life.
Jules considered the fact that attachment was most difficult for those who hadn’t seen forgiveness modeled for them in childhood, by their own families. Parents who held on to their resentment and pain, rather than find peace, god, acceptance or creative flow. Parents who too often judged others rather than searching for reasons and finding the benefit of the doubt.
Jules sat and sipped from his mug of ginger tea. Life was always hard. Caring was even harder, but Jules never knew another way. It often led to disappointment, but he had no other choice. He had to attach completely and had to become disappointed as a result.
The friendships with Leonard and Eugene, and Seamus, and maybe now Charlie, those friendships made life more meaningful.