This is exactly what I needed to read today. Thank you for your honesty, Tim. And if it helps at all, I’m just as angry and outraged as you are about our current situation.
I’ve been a nerd most of my life and I love Tolkien and LOTR. The following has been my favorite passage for a long time but I’ve thought of it often in the increasingly depressing last decade. It occurs at a particularly desperate moment toward the end, where Sam is close to losing hope:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.”
What’s different now is this: I’ve learned — just a little — not to let that anger control me.
I know exactly what you mean.
I like your writing.
Thank you so much!
This is exactly what I needed to read today. Thank you for your honesty, Tim. And if it helps at all, I’m just as angry and outraged as you are about our current situation.
I’ve been a nerd most of my life and I love Tolkien and LOTR. The following has been my favorite passage for a long time but I’ve thought of it often in the increasingly depressing last decade. It occurs at a particularly desperate moment toward the end, where Sam is close to losing hope:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.”