True Confession: I'm listening to The Lord of the Rings audiobooks right now and I don't hate it.

Who have I become?

My first (and last, don’t worry) piece of LOTR fan art.

Lame

So, as recently as maybe five years ago, I thought The Lord of the Rings movies/books et al were epically lame.

The movies were too long and I hated (HATED) those two other dumb Hobbits who were constantly doing stupid things like, “whoops I looked into this orb that everyone told me not to look into and now we’re all going to die” and I just thought all of that fantasy stuff was for pre-teen boys who played too much D&D.

L-A-M-E.

And then… something changed.

For some reason I decided I would watch the trilogy again with my husband a few years ago and… it hit different.

Maybe it was the fact that the state of the world had gotten decidedly worse since the last time I had seen it, or that people’s motivations had gotten decidedly more evil, or that it seemed like we were all just becoming decidedly more and more… lost.

All I know is, there I was, watching Sean Astin carry his best little hobbit friend up the side of a volcano and I was sobbing as I hard as I did the first time I watched Sophie’s Choice.

I think it all came down to this quote:

FRODO: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

GANDALF: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

I felt Frodo. I was like, ‘Yeah, Frodo. Same. SAME.’

And Gandalf’s response… it soothed me. He might as well have said it directly to me. It helped me wrap my arms around all this chaos, find my place it in all. Stop lamenting over what was happening and instead focus on what I was doing about it.

It was, dare I say, hope.

Hope, which has felt like an impossibility these days. Hope, which has seemed like a foolish remnant of years gone by. Hope, which I had come to deem borderline dangerous. Here it was. Somewhere inside of me. It was risky, maybe, but it was there nonetheless.

Inspired by

There is a lot of discussion among literary critics about how much Tolkien was influenced by his experience of World War I when he was writing the story. Whether this was meant as an allegory for what he saw happening in the world around him. He was cagey about it, never fully confirming how much he intended for connections to be drawn to real life events.

But, as we know, and discuss here often, it was most likely inspired by something. And whatever it was, it was profound enough that it allowed him to create a story that somehow spoke to me, a middle-aged white lady in Los Angeles who doesn’t even care for the fantasy genre, decades later.

That’s straight-up magic.

It spoke to me enough that I wanted to read the books. So, I waited for weeks in an online queue at my library for the audiobooks recorded by some very enthusiastic British guy in 1990 and now I fall asleep to Gimli son of Gloin arguing with Legolas about trees and I wake up thinking about why Gandalf is also called Mithrandir and that Orthanc is a weird name for an evil lair.

But, more importantly, I carry with me the feeling of moving forward when the world tells you there’s no point.

Because if Elijah Wood can walk thousands of miles and face countless perils (that huge spider was no joke!) get his finger bitten off and STILL succeed? Well, maybe we’ve got a shot, too.

He didn’t give up. And neither will I.

Here are some other quotes from Lord of the Rings that I find moving:

• PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
  GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take.

• “But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”

• “It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would rather have stayed there in peace.”

• “Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”

• “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

• “Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

• “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

• “Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”

• “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?”

• “I’ll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,”