I SPENT A PLEASANT, if odd, afternoon with Julian. He took me to a ballroom a few streets away where seasoned tango dancers were giving a show. As the music thumped through my body like a second heartbeat, I noticed Julian’s feet tapping, his legs moving slightly as if he were imagining himself doing the moves. Then we walked through the winding alleys until it was time for me to head back for another red-eye flight home. As we stood on the sidewalk outside Julian’s apartment, music wafting out of the studio and filling the air around us, Julian turned to me.
“One more thing, Jonathan,” he said. From a pocket in his robe, he pulled a small leather-bound notebook. “I’d like you to keep a journal while you are away.”
“A diary?” I asked. “What for?”
“Not a diary, Jonathan. A journal. The talismans lend power to those who hold them. But those who have them give these tokens power as well. It is important for me to know your thoughts and feelings about this journey—and about what the talismans mean to you once you are in their presence.”
My shoulders slumped. I didn’t know what was worse—taking weeks out of my life to travel around the world collecting someone else’s stuff, or having to write about it. Self-reflection has never been my forte.
“I think once you are on your own, once you have these incredible talismans in your hands, recording what’s in your heart won’t be as onerous as it sounds,” said Julian.
I was about to say, sure, whatever, but I stopped myself. What did it matter? If I was going to do this crazy thing, I might as well do it the way Julian wanted.
Just then the cab pulled up in front of us. As I climbed in, my resolve was nicked by small points of fear. It had been a very long time since I had started something new, begun any sort of adventure. I shut the door and looked back at Julian as the taxi began to edge away from the sidewalk. Julian raised his hand to wave, and then called out to me.
“Jonathan,” he said, “be joyful. It’s not every day that you get to save a life!”
IT TOOK ALL MY NERVE to get in my car on Monday morning and head into the office. I had three weeks of vacation coming, and I would have to take them as soon as possible. But if the journey took longer than that, I could be in real trouble. All I could ask for was unpaid time off, and if the answer was no, I guess I was out of a job.
But honestly, I said to myself, as I hauled my reluctant carcass out of the car and forced myself through the front doors of the office, what did one foolish choice matter? After all, in the past, I had always made what I thought were great decisions at the time. And where had that got me? My job had become a constant source of stress and frustration. My wonderful wife was leaving me. Whatever savings I had built up through all my hard work were going to be decimated by divorce. And even the joy I felt with Adam was being eaten away by the guilt I had, seeing him only on the weekends—and being such a lousy dad even then. Could one crazy move like this trip really cause me any more pain than all my sensible decisions had brought me?
I spent an hour swiveling in my desk chair, wallowing in disappointment and pessimism. By the time I walked into my boss’s office, I had accepted my whole predicament with fatalistic resignation. I had, in fact, almost forgotten how difficult this discussion was going to be.
I was quickly reminded, however, once the first few sentences had left my mouth.
I had settled into one of the strategically low office chairs that faced David’s mammoth desk. He had hardly looked up from his computer as I walked in. But as I explained that I needed to take my vacation, and perhaps even more time to deal with a family emergency overseas, he raised his head. His expression could only be described as “stunned.” As I launched into an explanation about my accumulated vacation days, he held up his hand.
“Let me get this straight,” David said. “You want twenty-one days off in a row, without notice?”
I couldn’t help myself. “Well, technically, Saturday and Sunday are called ‘the weekend,’ so no, not twenty-one straight days.”
“Jonathan, you know damn well that no one is allowed to take more than two weeks’ vacation in a row,” he shot back.
The conversation only got worse when I said that I didn’t know exactly when I would return.
“Of all the people in this organization,” David said, “you’re the last person I would have thought would pull a stunt like this.”
“I know,” I said. He was right.
“You know, Jonathan, you’re considered a rising star around here. And before today, if you asked me to name one person who was going to come out of this sale or merger or whatever it is looking like the golden boy, I would have said it was you. But you take off like this, at this time…”
He turned to look at the window. He was twirling a pen between his fingers, a frown stiffening his face.
I didn’t need to hear this.
“Look,” I said. “I talked to Nawang over the weekend. She has agreed to manage my projects during my absence. She knows what she’s doing. And she can always try me on my phone in an emergency. So—can I take my vacation, or do I have to resign?”
“Take the vacation,” David said tersely. “But I’ll tell you one thing. If we can do without you for a month, we can probably do without you forever.”
I got up from the chair and headed for the door. Before I crossed the threshold, I stopped and turned.
“David, would you have said the same thing if I’d made this request because something was going on with my wife or son?”
David continued to stare out the window. His expression was unreadable.
The walk back to my office was a long one. It was chilling to think that David might not care about helping me if my child was ill or in need. But why did I expect anything different? This place did things to people. I had seen that with Juan.
Juan. There wasn’t a day I didn’t think about my old boss, my old friend. As the months passed, I had found it increasingly difficult not to be distracted by his absence. I often found myself waking up in the night, unable to fall back to sleep, going over and over events in my mind, reliving my part in the whole disaster. But no matter how often I replayed it, I couldn’t put it behind me. Getting away from it all was probably the best thing I could do.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were a maelstrom. I scrambled to resolve things at work. I let loose a tsunami of messages and phone calls. I blew around town, doing banking, picking up dry cleaning, attempting drive-by visits with my son. Even packing was chaotic—how did I know what to take if I didn’t even know all the places I would be heading to?
And then I was sitting on the red-eye flight. To Turkey. On my way to meet a friend of Julian’s. My phone was turned off; there was no paperwork in my overhead luggage. I had many quiet hours by myself with nothing I had to do, nothing I could do. I was hoping to rest, but my mind was still racing. I took out a piece of paper from my jacket pocket. Julian had sent me a brief note with the airline tickets.
“Thank you,” it said, “for taking time away from your family and your work to take this voyage. I know you had a dozen reasons not to go, but one of the best gifts we can give ourselves is to get rid of our excuses. Rudyard Kipling once wrote, ‘We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.’ And the dangerous thing about excuses is that if we recite them enough times, we actually come to believe they are true. This task I’ve asked you to do involves a lot of travel, but I hope that you can focus on the opportunities it provides rather than the inconveniences it may pose. Life itself is a journey after all, and what matters most is not what you are getting, but who you are becoming.”
Julian