I rewatched those movies a month or so ago and it affected me for several weeks. Images from the movie kept coming back to me. And it continues. Earlier this week I was pondering Galadriel saying to Frodo, approximately: “the task of being a Ring-Bearer has fallen to you. If you do not find a way, no one will.”
This is what I have long felt. I can tell you psychodynamically why this is likely so, but it remains a reality. But then it occurred to me this applies to all of us. All of us are ring-bearers. All of us have been given tasks to fulfill. All of us were born to a purpose, a purpose which will be difficult, which will cause us moments of doubt and fear. All of us were born to at least the potential for heroism, for going far beyond what we thought possible. Somewhere in our hearts, I think everyone feels this, and I think mythically this is why Lord of the Rings has resonated so strongly through the souls of so many sensitive people.
Too many of us feel the opportunities for heroism are few and far between. That opportunities for greatness are behind us, that all is settled, or will in any event be settled for us, and that our voices count for nothing, our actions count for nothing.
I of course am powerless to predict the future of the world, but I am not powerless to predict my own actions, what I choose to do, how I choose to live my life, the commitments I choose to take on, the responsibilities I choose to shoulder and advance as well as I can.
So, in important respects, we can all predict the future. We can control what we control, and if this spirit is generalized sufficiently, that WILL make a difference. It cannot but make a difference. The best offense any enemy can marshal is the ability to convince his enemy he has no chance.
To take a concrete example, as I will never tire of pointing out until the truth is proclaimed generally, the American people were convinced, AFTER we won the Vietnam War, that it could not be won, and this belief, and this belief alone–as embodied in what has rightly been termed an Imperial Congress–cost the South Vietnamese, the Cambodians, and the Laotians their freedom, and incalculable suffering.
And the way is, at some point, always down the Paths of the Dead, another metaphor from Lord of the Rings. How do each of us walk into our own internal “deaths”? How do we confront what is within us, but not living, not blossoming, which is hidden in fear and abandonment? How do we face fear itself, naked, uncloaked, unavoidable? How do we find and master the many monsters each of us hides even in the bright light of day?
What did Aragorn do? He walked into a dark place, filled with inchoate, ineffable terrors, and confronted them. He mastered them. And he took their energy to achieve concrete goods, then allowed them to dissipate fully.
I look at my own life, and it often seems I do little. I don’t socialize that often. I can talk to anyone about anything, but most people get frightened when I “get deep”. This is partly my own fault. I have not mastered my demons. My touch is coarse. I am indelicate. Emotionally, it is sometimes like trying to paint with kitchen mitts on.
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But it is also easy to see the entirety of our world as engineered to prevent the emergence of deep truths, to foster and feed self serving lies. You cannot speak deep truths without reminding people of the demonic, of everything they fear, of everything they would give anything to bury forever.
Now, this is the place where the Good lies too. You cannot separate them easily. The Earth touches the Sky through us. This is a Kum Nye metaphor, or at least I have appropriated a specific visualization for this purpose.
I am watching Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev again, and as always with his films, am having “things” emerge continually. Back to it.
I will add that I was watching an interview with one of Kieslowski’s friends a couple weeks ago, after watching Camera Buff (which felt vaguely autobiographical, although that was not mentioned), and he commented that Kieslowski’s belief was that art–good art–was supposed to be work. It was not entertainment. It was conscious work. It takes effort. But what do you get with any effort, any work? Something new. Working is building, and building, for me, is Life.