“I had been crying, and he heard me, I guess. My cries were not the muffled sobs of loneliness or the whimpering of discomfort – though certainly I was lonely and uncomfortable – but the anguished wail that a guy will let loose only when he is sure there is no one around to hear him. And I was sure. Wrong, obviously, but sure. At least as sure as one spending another night under a pier can be …Honestly I didn’t think anyone knew I slept there – which is why I was so surprised when I looked up and saw Jones.
“Come here, son,” he said, with his hand outstretched. “Move into the light” (p. 2-3).
Jones (or Garcia or Chen, depending on your nationality) is an ageless old man who shows up for 23-year-old Andy under the pier. But instead of allowing Andy to grovel in the self-pity his situation warrants, Jones challenges him to “get started…start noticing a few things. We need to check your heart. We need to gather a little perspective” (p. 5). Then he gives Andy a few biographies to read and leaves but keeps reappearing until Andy is on his feet.
This first incident in The Noticer by Andy Andrews is typical of what happens in this parable-type story of meaningful encounters that Jones engineers with people who are at crisis crossroads. To each, from the man intent on committing suicide to the unscrupulous land developer, Jones appears at just the right moment and with the right combination of honesty, wisdom and hope to change the course of a life.
Jones’ main message to each desperate soul is to seek perspective:
“In desperate times, much more than anything else, folks need perspective. For perspective brings calm, calm leads to clear thinking. Clear thinking yields new ideas. And ideas produce the bloom…of an answer” (p. 154).
The book is a quick and easy read, peopled as it is with troubled characters mired in relatable situations. Jones-to-the-rescue conversations are full of proverbial wisdom dispensed in pithy aphorisms. I was glad I wasn’t reading a library copy as I found myself reaching for my pen again and again to highlight Jonesisms like:
“…life is like a game of Monopoly. You may own hotels on Boardwalk, or you may be renting on Baltic Avenue. But in the end, it all goes back in the box” (p. 102).
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