"Great evil does not require great words to be vanquished, rather it requires everyday people doing regular acts of love and kindness." So said Gandalf, one of the greatest wizards ever to grace the silver screen. Which got me thinking, in both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, mountains are a nearly insurmountable destination, hobbits as heroes, sunlight as the harbringer of good, and a ring that corrupts whoever uses it to remain invisible.
For those of you who are ardent J.R.R. Tolkien fans or literature scholars, I'm sure these symbols came as no surprise to you. In Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" the symbolism comes particularly fast and furious.
But as I left the midnight screening (why yes, I am a nerd and will make no apologies for it) of The Hobbit, it made me think about the symbolism in my own life. After two years travelling as a consultant for my fraternity, and going on my final semester of graduate school, surely there were lessons that I could reflect upon and apply right?
There are, and in hindsight, they were both simple but fundamental to who I want to be as a person that I kick myself for not internalizing them earlier.
1) Inaction Corrupts - Like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, it is very tempting to want to withdraw, hide from the world, and live life observing from the shadows. Like Gollum, I was very content to live fixated on the immediate (such as my video games and other electronics) rather than embrace hard choices and difficulties. At its height, my fears became so bad that I would literally avoid checking email, voice mail, or even leaving the house for fear of being required to do something. Maybe this is why bystander intervention training resonates so deeply with me. I understand the temptations and initial gains of avoidance. At the end of the day, whether we are talking personally, professionally, or systematically, inaction only leads to more problems than the initial impulse to hide.
I will admit, life has been (relatively) difficult of late, but that is no excuse to be mean, withdraw, or otherwise run from making the most of my time.
2) Active agency and control is important to me - When I say control, I don't mean micro-managing but rather influence, engagement, and self-authorship.
It is why I like driving so much. Why I would rather give up a week of my time to drive across country to see family rather than board a plane and be where I would like to be within hours.
It made me reflect more specifically about what made me happiest when I was a travelling consultant. Specifically, many people wondered how I could stand the long distances between chapters. I realized that like Tolkien's mountains, the road became a symbol of my own agency.
I always had a starting point and there was always a required ending point, but how I got there was up to me. It was my foot on the pedal, my music on the radio, my hands on the wheel. But most importantly, there were no expectations while I was on the road. I could just as easily be dressed in a suit as gym shorts and a ratty t-shirt. I could be singing (terribly) to bad pop music or jumping from point to point thinking about a presentation I had to give.
Most importantly, I could be present and embrace the small quirks. I might not be changing the world driving around (in fact, you could argue I am just contributing to climate change, but that is an ethical question for another time), but I could work on changing myself.
And if we can't help ourselves, then we cannot help others.
