Everyone has his or her own personal journey to follow. As a friend or relative, you can be there for them, offer advice and caution them when you see danger, but in the end, each person has to make a choice about how to live their lives. Only something inside of you will make a difference in you.

Just like Nemo and Marlin in Finding Nemo.

I finished J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories last night. I find that I enjoy reading Salinger. Unlike my experience with Virginia Woolf, who writes beautiful and pointedly, but with such verbosity and content that it is hard to get through it all. I should be done with Mrs. Dalloway sometime around the turn of the next decade.

This was my first sampling of Salinger’s work but I think I’d like to read some of his other stuff as well, perhaps Catcher in the Rye. “Teddy,” the last story in this collection of short stories was a compelling story about a boy-genius who was so very enlightened that he had a memory of his previous life. Though his parents where not Hindus or Buddhists, he believed in reincarnation.

Salinger introduces the boy with this charming description:

“Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed–the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper, or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however oblique and slow-traveling, of real beauty.”

Later in the story, it is revealed that he has the ability to predict when a person could possibly die, and in fact reveals that he himself may die that day or later on Feb. 14, 1958.

He is completely resigned to the idea of death, as he did not see it as an end to his being but only as a transformation. I think this is an interesting concept. It is true that death is a natural part of the cycle. Everyone dies, “My gosh, everyone’s done it thousands and thousands of times.” Teddy explains.

Seems morbid but it actually makes me feel a bit lighter. Like this idea frees you from the fight. It allows a person to enjoy each moment because it could be the last one you have in this lifetime.

Teddy was explaining this to a man, about his own potential death and how it wouldn’t be all that tragic because he’d “just be doing what he was suppose to do after all.” The man replied, “It may not be tragic from your point of view, but it would certainly be a sad event for your mother and dad.”

Teddy answered, “But that is only because they have names and emotions for everything that happens.”

I don’t have a complete conclusion to this whole idea. It all seems so simple and complex at the same time, it did however get me thinking about life and the names we attach to things.

I highly recommend the shorts stories. They are all wonderful and weird in their own way.