After Marci and the kids left me, I’d tried to fill the endless quiet evenings first with bars, then later with classical music, hoping the structure and sound might take me somewhere beyond my broken world. Occasionally it did, but in the end Mozart couldn’t lead me to the promised land. I was still Nick Seagrave, a success in the minds of everyone except those I really cared about.

Joshua smiled and pointed to the Monet hanging above the fireplace in my living room. Something about that painting had once moved me, or promised to move me. Joshua stared into the painting and started singing along with the music, some enchanting song about “the great garden in the old world, when time began and art was born.”

He sang with insight and authority, sounding as though he’d been there. His voice was powerful, soothing. It seemed to push out of my mind any remnants of negative thinking, and for that I was grateful.

I followed him as he walked slowly down my hallway, which was lined on one side with oak bookshelves. I scanned the titles on the spines. I’d switched majors in college, first philosophy, then business, and I kept every textbook. Over the years I bought and read the major business and leadership titles plus occasional historical studies and top-notch biographies, with a constant supply of westerns and action thrillers. I drifted away from philosophy, but in the past two years I started searching out the best new works by the brightest contemporary minds in the field as well as new editions of old classics. Not that I’d read them all yet, or even most of them, but I intended to. Maybe somehow they would soak in, help me unravel the tangled knots of my mind and find the meaning that had always eluded me.

“Commendable,” Joshua commented as he pulled out volumes here and there. “You have a genuine thirst for truth.”

“In my college days I searched and probed, thinking the answers were within reach. Then I got more practical. If I couldn’t unravel the secrets of the universe, at least I could make some big bucks.”

I meant to be witty, but my words rang hollow.

When I saw one philosophy text, a boyish face popped into my mind—Mark, my fraternity brother in Phi Sigma Epsilon. We played intramural football together and went to a few concerts—the Stones and the Grateful Dead. We discussed philosophy after class over joints.

“What does it all mean? What’s it all about?” Mark had asked me a few times.

“I don’t know,” I’d said, “but I want to. If we keep looking, one day we’ll find it.”