To have an aligned and calm nervous system, perhaps one of the most crucial things we can do is to create a sense of inner alignment.

We talk endlessly about meditation, affirmations, long walks in nature, self-help books, podcasts, and routines, and they can all be valuable.

But I keep coming back to a different idea, one that feels much deeper:

the secret vocation.

Not a career.

Not a job title.

Not something you necessarily put on your résumé.

Something quieter.

Something that makes your inner life feel alive.

For Proust, this idea of an inner vocation is inseparable from the question of how we spend our limited time. In "In Search of Lost Time", he comes to understand the concept of "the silent vocation!" Know yourself, have mastery over your soul, find your soul purpose, reasons to exist, then turn it to your life project; a project that animate your inner life! And that peace of mind, excitment and purposefulness will make your nervous system, magically, mystically healed.

To know yourself is not merely to discover what you like. It is to discover what you feel almost mysteriously compelled to pursue, and then allow that impulse to shape your life.

Think about it as:

"It's not the pursuit of happiness, it is the happiness of pursuing."

I keep thinking about Proust.

There is something almost haunting about the image of Proust near the end of his life: physically declining, yet continuing to write, revise, and accumulate pages.

His body was approaching its end, his work was still expanding.

The image reminds me of:

a soldier lying dead with a watch still ticking on his wrist.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The body has stopped.

Time hasn't.

And perhaps that is what a vocation does: it gives your limited time a direction.

Proust eventually recognizes that the experiences of his life, including suffering, pleasure, memory, and love, had become the raw material of the work he was destined to create.

Then I came across Lacan's concept of Symbolic death, offering another way: you commit yourself to something larger than yourself, aka your life project and secret vocation, therefore your fear and anxietry toward death subsides. You know what makes your soul glowing, that inner necessity, that mystic compultion will animate you, create yet don't frame it around being productive or presenting it to an audience. Correct, every one of us need a certain level of security and comfor, but finding and committing yourself to your secret vocation, not for fame, recognition status and money, will eventually bring all of those to you, due to the fact that your secret vocation is pure and authentic, and authenticity is rarest in this generation.

Sartre offers another concept: " False consciousness ", where you obey and do whatever the government offeres you as the norm and right thing, you do as instructed yet you feel empty, lost with a nervous system on fire, becase you are not aligned. That's when your secret vocation will rescue you, to live mythical.

Maybe your vocation is writing, pholosophizing, literature and reading, cinma and watching films, poetry, painting, recording video and thosand of other things which can alter and change throughout your life.

The inner necessity is what matters.

Think about Miyazaki, at first there was simply a person who wanted to draw and tell stories through manga, which was his secret vocation, yet it changed and he became the creator of Ghibili universe, fame, status, and wealth poured in.

The vocation came first.

The world came later.

Through exploring and openness, seek your secret vocation and live a mytical rich life.

The Catcher in the Rye (I sometimes think of it as the realistic counterpart to Harry Potter) is one of those book titles that almost everyone recognizes, even if they have never read the novel. Yet for years, I wondered what it actually meant. Was Holden Caulfield literally a catcher, a Quidditch player standing in a field of rye, catching magical balls?

As a Persian reader, the mystery was even greater because the novel is known in Persian as Natour-e Dasht (ناطور دشت), «The Guardian of the Field», a title that seemed even more enigmatic than the original.

The answer lies in an eighteenth-century Scottish poem, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" by Robert Burns. One of its famous lines reads:

«"If a body meet a body coming through the rye."»

The poem itself is playful and romantic, carrying subtle sexual undertones, but Holden remembers the line incorrectly. Instead of meet, he hears catch:

«"If a body catch a body coming through the rye."»

Why does Holden misremember such an important line?

That tiny mistake reveals an extraordinary amount about Holden's character.

Rather than imagining adults meeting in a field, Holden envisions thousands of children playing freely in a vast field of rye beside a dangerous cliff. He imagines himself standing at the edge, catching every child before they fall from the cliff, a powerful symbol of the inevitable loss of innocence and the painful transition into adulthood.

When Holden tells his sister Phoebe that the only thing he truly wants to be is "the catcher in the rye," he is expressing a desperate wish to protect children from a world he believes is full of phoniness, disappointment, hypocrisy, and emotional compromise. He cannot stop growing up himself, but he dreams of saving others from that fate.

This is where Persian translation adds another fascinating dimension. One thing that never fails to amaze me is the ingenuity of Persian literary figures. Sometimes I wonder whether they carry magic wands rather than dictionaries?

A literal Persian translation of The Catcher in the Rye would sound awkward and confusing. Instead, the translator Ahmad Karimi chose the word natour (ناطور), meaning a guardian or watchman who protects a field. Rather than translating Holden's action literally, he translated its symbolic purpose. Holden is not merely catching; he is guarding innocence itself.

One interpretation, discussed by the Iranian novelist Afshin Refaat and later quoted by Abbas Maroufi, adds yet another layer of symbolism. Although this explanation is not generally accepted as the historical origin of Salinger's title, it offers a remarkably beautiful metaphor. According to this agricultural interpretation, during traditional rye harvesting, someone would stand beside the machine to catch scattered grains and return them so they would not be lost.

Suddenly, the image becomes deeply symbolic. The scattered grains resemble vulnerable children, while the catcher becomes the one who refuses to let them disappear.

Whether or not Salinger intended this meaning, the Persian interpretation enriches the novel in a uniquely poetic way.

Perhaps the novel's greatest irony is that Holden longs to save everyone else while no one seems able to save him. As he imagines himself standing at the edge of the cliff, protecting children from falling, he is quietly standing on the edge of his own emotional collapse.

The Catcher in the Rye and Harry Potter, they share the same human longing: to preserve innocence, and to find someone who will catch us when we are the ones about to fall.

That, to me, is why The Catcher in the Rye remains one of the most unforgettable titles in modern literature. A simple misheard line from a Scottish poem becomes a timeless symbol of compassion, innocence, and the fragile passage from childhood into adulthood. And through the inspired Persian title, Natour-e Dasht, the novel gains yet another layer of beauty, one that reminds us how translation can become an act of literary interpretation rather than mere linguistic conversion.

How is The Catcher in the Rye translated in your language? Does the title carry the same symbolism, or does it reveal something entirely different? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 🪷