Returning to my roots.

"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. And 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."

—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Re-reading The Catcher in the Rye has brought a new perspective to me. Perhaps it's because I have grown a little more, and instead of looking through the angsty eyes of teenage Holden Caulfield, I now begin to understand what Mr Antolini was trying to tell him after all. William Stekel 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." It is not too late for growth; for the idealist to become the pragmatist. Even so, the transformation leaves something of an ideal for the reborn pragmatist to strive towards, in a practical fashion. And I want to believe that in the end, even Holden Caulfield was capable of it.