Cliffs and catchers

Awhile ago, while purusing greeting cards in the shops along 4th Ave, I came across one that has stuck with me. It read: "It's easy to fall in love, the hard part is finding someone to catch you." I'm not even sure who said it. It makes me think of falling in love, and its connotations of random, uncontrolled impulses. It makes me think of choice versus intuition. It makes me think of how the feeling of love relates to the actions of lov-ing.

It also makes me think of J.D. Salinger's notion of catching, in his benchmark novel of lost innocence "Catcher in the Rye." In the main character's most memorable speeech, he states that all he wants to do with his life is be the one who catches the children who fall off the unseen cliffs of innocence, unawares.

Maybe in this business of love we are like children, running and running in fields of rye, pushing through the rising stalks to be startled and delighted, to be frightened and tripped up. What if love were not the field at all, or those we met there, but at the bottom of some cliff we never saw, amidst all that enchantment. For so long I thought that love would be what I met in those fields. One who would chase me, and run along with me. One who would make me feel like I owned all that rye. One who would lift me up to see beyond the field to gently curved horizons.

When the cliff came, I realized that maybe love is in the catching.

(And I hope that was the real cliff and not a practice round.)