Are you a better person?

[Durelin]

*shakes her head* Fordim's everywhere now, I see...and is that eight boxes I count? 'Tis astounding...though it's no real surprise.

Yet again you ask some mind-boggling questions. (I've always wanted to use that word, 'mind-boggling'...) So I'm going to answer some specific ones in a rather general way. First, the whole matter of improving yourself. It is my belief that self-improvement has the prefix 'self' for a reason. Making yourself a better person is entirely up to you. It's also completely an inward thing. The physical world has countless effects on all people, but they are merely stimuli for internal growth. In the end, no matter what happens in our physical world around us, our intellectual and spiritual world is ours to control. But on what plane is something like The Lord of the Rings located? For its physical properties, the story is simply a bunch -- a whole bunch! -- of words. The importance and meaning of words is arguable, but can any words really make you a better person?

But what do people do with words once they read them or hear them? They don't just recognize each word and what it means according to Webster, but they take it in as something that means something, and, needless to say, something beyond a man-made definition. It's almost like a word has a color. But of course it's hard to define colors, especially in all the various hues there can be, and everyone is going to see them differently. So truly, a person can paint a picture with words, and Tolkien most certainly does, but how easily can we dispute over his medium, his message, his tone, and his painting's impact when we hang it upon the wall and scrutinize it? And of course we all know what one does when he walks by a painting: he adjusts it so it hangs straight. But the next person that walks by might see it as crooked, and will adjust it again. They saw what the former person saw to be straight as crooked, and see what they see to be straight as straight, though they had to make what the other person saw as straight crooked in order for them to see it straight.

I love analogies.

The meaning we receive from something like The Lord of the Rings is personal. But meaning alone is nothing unless it is understood, and applied. And it can be applied anywhere, as long as it becomes a part of you. And undoubtedly it will, as we essentially have no where to apply it except to ourselves. So everything is relevant, and everything else irrelevant, as relevance is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe there is a 'Tolkien in all of us,' simply because we have all found our relevance in this man's life-work. But a 'Tolkien in all of us' does not define 'all of us' as anything more than of the same species!

You could say there is a Tolkien in me, just as there's a Yoda in me. And I could say that reading and re-reading The Lord of the Rings has made me a better person before. In a very basic way, it got me into reading when I first read it. Also, through that very first reading, it opened up my mind. It opened up a world of fantasy that I hadn't known before, and this began one big expansion in my brain and my known world. Windows were widened for me, so more light could come in. I still have a great many cobwebs to clean up still, and there's more windows and more doors that need to be opened to the light. But I took Tolkien's world and let it inspire me and enlighten me, used it as a guide down no certain path. I guess Frodo's journey inspired me to take on my own journey in life with a little more heart. In that way, I believe I have become a better person through my adventures in Middle-Earth, and beyond.

Now I can ask myself but one question: have I actually made a point in this post?

-Durelin