Close to my Heart

Mr. Antolini's lecture to Holden Caufield in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind...It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know...This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. they gave up before they ever really even got started...I don't want to scare you...but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause...If I write you something down for you, will you read it carefully?...Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst names Wilhelm Steket...Here's what he said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'...I think that one of these days...you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you...And I hate to tell you...but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student--whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge...And I think you'll find, once you get past all the...Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it--to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry...I'm not trying to tell you...that only educated and scholarly men, if they're creative and brilliant to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts to the end. And--most important--nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker...Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

The Catcher in the Rye is my all-time favorite book, and this part, this lecture, holds the most meaning for me. It says to me that no matter who we may be, we must take everything that we can from what is available to us. If we don't, we will only ever merely wear the exoskeleton of the person we want to be. We can't spend all of our time hating the behavior that we see; we can't hate the changing times and what they turn into. We will get lost looking for what we will never find. If we are to be happy, we should get our ideas in order and make them real, instead of just searching and waiting. We can't always find who we are; we have to create ourselves.

This book, especially this little part, was beautifully written. Every word can be applied to any one person's life. I will always hold this close to my heart as a reminder that we are all human, and we all stray from the path we should be on. Sometimes we must put searching aside and bring creation to the table.