A Manifesto on Catching (Inspired by Erlend Loe)

Many manifestos that you read will call upon you to do a great many things. Rise up, create new political systems and get swept up in the zeitgeist.

Not this manifesto though. This one is a little simpler, but no less important.

For this you will need a ball. Also if you feel the urge you can also use a catching mitt, but that’s up to you.

Now that you have a ball, make sure that it’s the right ball for you. Make sure it feels right and its the right size for you. Also make sure you like the colour of your ball. If you have a catching mitt make sure it fits.

Now that all of that is sorted out, you can begin catching. If you feel using a catching mitt makes you feel happy and a more secure catcher, then that’s fine.

The act of catching is very simple. Ball goes up, ball comes down in your hand. If you drop the ball that’s okay. Just pick the ball up and start again. Dropping the ball does not make you a bad person, and the more you catch, the less you will drop. You will always drop one occasionally, everyone does. Also you can bounce your ball off a wall and catch it that way. You can also catch it indoors or outdoors, which ever makes you feel more confident. You can either simply play catch or you can turn it into a game seeing how many you can catch in a row. Again both ways are perfectly fine ways to play catch.

Now onto the main purpose of this manifesto and why catching is important.

Catching is important as it is…well, its hard to say. To find out why catching is important you have to do it. Like Zen Buddhism requires practice to actually be Zen Buddhism, catching requires you to catch a ball.

It’s really a simple thing. But the ball nestling safely in your hand feels good. You keep on catching and you begin to feel secure and happy. Eventually you catch continuously so that eventually the world slows down, fades away and it’s just you and the ball. It’s just like meditation and like meditation, twoness becomes oneness, you become one with the ball and the world finally makes sense. All because of catching.

If everyone, all over the world just stopped what they were doing and simply played catch for ten minutes no one would fight, insult or kill. They would all be catching and like in Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Keeping Quiet” – “It would be an exotic moment/without rush, without engines/we would all be together/in a sudden strangeness”. And the world would make total and perfect sense.

That is why catching is important.

Seriously just play catch. You’ll achieve a great thing.

Inspired by Erlend Loe’s book “Naive. Super”.  And partly inspired by Pablo Neruda’s poem “Keeping Quiet”.

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