Tolkienisms – the Reality in Fantasy?

“One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.

In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.” [The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien]

My fantastical imagination kicked in, all over again, when I bought a plaque for my garden. It said, “Not all who wander are lost”. If you looked closely at the small print you realized that this was a quote by J.R.R. Tolkien. For the ‘Tolkienians’ out there, I needn’t expand on the greatness of the epic ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’. I read those, for the first time, when I was in 8th grade. If I were to tell you the year I would be (carbon) dating myself. My father’s old tattered copy of ‘The Hobbit’ triggered it all.

Needless to say I became a lifelong Tolkienian. With all due respect to the Trekkies out there, my Trekkie neurons had to create some harmonious living quarters with the Tolkienians.

History repeats itself. Not surprisingly Rayaan, my son, upon the insistence of his old man picked up the trilogy. Proud to tell you that he stuck to his guns and read the over 1000 pages of the tome, cover to cover, over a 4 month period. He was only 9 then. Much younger than I was when I first read it. Paternal pride aside, I wondered if he really enjoyed reading it or was he only, true to his gentle nature, trying to appease me?

So I put him to the test. “Sweetheart, would you draw for Baba any ‘creature’ from ‘The Lord of the Rings’?”

And he gave me this illustration. Then I re-tested him. “Do you want to watch the movie together?” He was in from the get go! Passed the test with flying colors. These results were much more gratifying than what he had ever given me earlier, even more so than the 'A's he had attained in the various standardized tests for public or private schools that he was preparing for.

While watching the 1st part of Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ for the umpteenth time, the following happened. “The more I think about the trilogy - books and movies included…”, I said to myself, “…the more the realization that Middle Earth is no different from the world that I inhabit. There are elves, dwarves, mythical and magical figures or creatures around me and in me – yet the beauty and evil, light and dark, of that human entity is paramount.”

Heavy thoughts? Perhaps…

I would like to call upon the Tolkienian in you to recall the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo, in the 1st part of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Trapped in the mines of Moria they are surrounded by all sorts of evil and Frodo is extremely disillusioned. He wonders why Bilbo Baggins, his well travelled uncle, did not kill the mean, somewhat schizophrenic, Gollum when he had the chance. At that point Gandalf reminds young Frodo not to be too eager to dole out death and judgment and instead to focus on this: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

I think the above is strongly reminiscent of my current understanding of my reality: in the final analysis, we ourselves are responsible for our ‘destinies’, our ‘journeys’; in life there is no ‘what if’ only ‘what is’….

[from rambling of an itinerant]