We all know the story of how The Lord of the Rings came to be. J.R.R. Tolkien was correcting his students’ papers one day when all of a sudden, he stopped to scribble something on the edge of a sheet; “In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.”
That little muse, combined with the author’s old passion for creating a mythological set piece to serve as a backdrop for his invented languages, ultimately gave way to Middle-earth, and all the stories found therein. Stories that have influenced and inspired tens of millions of people since their publication in the early ’50s. Hundreds of millions. Stories that make up most of the tropes we see in the entertainment industry today.
Perhaps now, more than ever, we need reminders of why we fell in love with this fictional universe in the first place, especially since Amazon’s The Rings of Power has divided the Tolkien fandom right down the middle.
To that end, one person recently shared a heartbreaking story about a 70-year-old fan battling Multiple Sclerosis — an incurable autoimmune condition — and how, despite not being able to think clearly or remember much, Tolkien’s world was still to her “as clear as the rising sun.”
Words fail to begin to describe how heart-wrenching this account was. For a reason that eludes you just as you’re about to make a mental leap for it, there’s also a certain sense of aching consolation in these words, as if the beauty of the story and its creation somehow manage to overshadow the tragedy of life — its frailty — for a brief while.
It reminds us of a poem Tolkien wrote for The Fellowship of the Ring, which seems fitting in this context.
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”