Unexpected Journeys

What a story about a hobbit leaving home has to say about the journeys we do not choose.

A calm sea never made a good sailor. Damn that quote is so tough. That was the first thing that came to mind when I finished Tolkien's Hobbit, and it is most of the reason I wanted to write about the book at all. I thought it was a great story, peak characters, absolute cinema, but I also thought there was a lot in it to learn from and grow on. Fully analyzing this book would take a long time, so instead I want to draw out the wisdom that a story about a hobbit going on a journey can offer, for myself and for anyone reading this.

Why does the quote fit? Because Bilbo starts off as a guy who never leaves his hobbit hole. It is warm, it is comfortable, and he likes it that way. Then this entire journey that he really did not choose changes his life in a pretty phenomenal way. He comes home with gold, with friends across the map, and with experiences that made him a far more interesting person than pretty much anyone else he knew in the Shire. It is easy to file The Hobbit away as a children's book and leave it there. It was written for children, and it reads like it. But if thinking dragons and wizards are cool is childish, then who wants to grow up? In reality, the lessons underneath are not childish at all. So let's begin.

01We Don't Always Choose Our Journeys

Bilbo does not set out to have an adventure. He steps outside to smoke some pipe weed, and that is what gets him introduced to Gandalf. It is a genuinely funny interaction. Bilbo says good morning, and Gandalf wants to know what he means by it. Is he wishing Gandalf a good morning, or saying the morning is good whether he wants it or not, or saying that he feels good this particular morning? By the end of the conversation Gandalf has decided, without Bilbo really thinking about it, that this hobbit is coming on an adventure, and he scratches a little sigil onto the door. Later thirteen dwarves show up uninvited and eat all his food, and before Bilbo has agreed to anything he is out the door without a handkerchief.

So why did Tolkien choose to start this way? I don't know for certain, but I think the idea is that sometimes life ends up choosing our adventures for us. We like to tell ourselves we plan our chapters, but a lot of the important ones start with a knock we did not expect. A new relationship, getting fired from a job, getting the new job. Meeting someone at a party who happens to know somebody, and the two of you hit it off because you both have some niche hobby you picked up from your cousin, or yada yada yada, whatever. Bilbo just decided to go outside for a smoke, and it changed his life in a phenomenal way.

Two things I take from that. One, you can't always decide your journeys. Two, life is complex, and the chain of causality can be very convoluted and also very funny to think about. As an example from my end, my parents met in an elevator at a work conference. I have always kind of laughed at the idea that I would not even be here writing this if my dad had decided he wanted a drink of water. Or I wouldn't be here if he got caught up in a conversation with another coworker. Or I wouldn't be here if he decided not to go to the meeting cause it was optional. Weird stuff, and that is the side of life I wanted to talk about here. Acknowledging these complexities of life and humbling yourself to the lack of control you have can be incredibly freeing in my opinion. In the end, we can really only decide how we feel and act when these journeys come up. The takeaway is then to smile and trudge along with whatever happens and not be too tied down to expectations.

02Small Acts of Courage

The whole story turns on minor actions. A hobbit is about the least likely hero imaginable, a little fat guy from the Shire who smokes pipe weed and has second breakfast, and he is juxtaposed with these mighty, prideful dwarven warriors. Yet Bilbo is the one who drives most of the plot. He talks his way through the riddle game with Gollum in the dark. He cuts the dwarves free from the spiders in Mirkwood when nobody else could. He creeps down the tunnel toward Smaug when the dwarves would not go first. None of these are grand gestures. Each one is a small act of showing up when it matters, and each one has the largest impact on the story.

The one I keep coming back to is not even an act of courage. It is an act of pity. After Bilbo has the ring and is invisible, he looks down at Gollum and feels sorry for the creature, so he does not kill him. This is right after Gollum tried to trap him in the caves and kill him for losing the riddle game, so Bilbo has every reason to hate him. He spares him anyway. In the end of the Tolkien's books, Gollum is the one who ends up getting the ring thrown into mount doom and subsequently destroyed. So, this supposed 'minor' act of pity ends up saving the entire world.

The way I parallel this with my own life is that you never really know what people are going through, and just being nice to one another can make a huge difference. I have had days where I am walking down the street having a genuinely shitty day, and someone may come by and compliment my shoes or outfit, or someone holds the door open, or someone just gives a smile and wishes for a nice day. Honestly, these small acts make me feel so much better, and they usually motivate me to go out and do the same with people. I also have had the opposite be true. I could be having a great day, but one minor comment or event can make me a douchebag. What I mean by saying all of this is that the impact you have does not necessarily depend on being the biggest or strongest person in the room. It depends on what you are willing to do in the moment when it counts, and those moments are usually smaller and quieter than we imagine.

03How Pride Turns to Greed and the Corruption of Spirit

Greed is an interesting one. I have always been fascinated with the origins of greed and at what point desire turns into something negative. I still struggle with knowing when we should be allowed to just want the things we want, versus when we should be actively questioning why we like certain things and whether we should pursue them at all. I don't find it greedy to want a bigger home or to live somewhere nice. Clearly, if you never desired anything, you would not really amount to anything in life. But there is a point where desire starts corrupting the spirit and makes you a lesser person, and I think this book is partly about where that point is.

There are two big examples of greed in the book, and they are not the same. The dwarves want gold. They dig into their mountains and take enormous pride in having the deepest halls, the most gold, the most gems, the finest metalwork and weapons. A lot of that comes from pride in their race, and I actually think it is the healthier kind. They want riches to build bigger and better things for their communities, to trade for food and resources, and to be able to say look at us, look how awesome we are. Smaug is the other example, and he has no need for any of it. He does not spend the gold, he does not eat it, he just sleeps on it. He takes it because he can and he shares it with nobody, because he is Smaug the Magnificent, the most terrible of calamities. That is where pride comes in. I don't think greed always comes from pride, but it definitely can, and it corrupts the spirit either way.

Thorin Oakenshield is the proof. Without his mountain he is regal. His dwarves trust him, he is loyal, he is empathetic to the world, and he is a good leader. The second he has the treasure he becomes suspicious of everyone around him. He is willing to go to war and have people die over gold, even though there is plenty to share, and even though Bard and the lake men suffered because of his quest. He will not hand over a fair amount because his pride as king under the mountain tells him the treasure is his by right. The ring is the same lesson pointed at power instead of wealth. While reading The Hobbit you do not really know what the ring is, just that it is magic, but you see Gollum's need to own it and control it because it gives him power over others, like the goblins he can kill while invisible. Later books show how that same power corrupts men. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I think part of the point is that it cannot really be controlled by anyone.

I do not know exactly how to apply all of this to my own life, but if I had to, I would say it teaches me not to be prideful. Be humble about who you are. That does not mean rolling over when someone disrespects you, but it does mean understanding that as a human you have a right to shelter, food and water, friends, and the feeling of being safe in your community, and once you have those it gets really hard to justify the insane wealth we see in the world. The pursuit of it does not seem fulfilling for any of the people chasing it. It usually just causes war. It caused Gollum to hide in a hole and become a decrepit shell of what he once was, forgetting all his friends. I think that is the warning Tolkien wanted to leave. You can have desires, but greed of any kind really corrupts the spirit, and there are plenty of other cool things in this world.

04The Desire for Peace and the Need for Adventure

This one held true for me because I am writing it during my final semester at college. I remember how it felt to be a freshman, incredibly nervous about this new chapter in my life. Now that college has become the norm, part of me thinks this is really cool, I am really glad I went, I am glad I am about to graduate and all that. But I also feel myself going through the same motions again, wanting that stability while understanding that change is what drives real growth. There is a conflict inside all of us. Once you have stability and peace, you wish for more struggle and adventure. Once you are in the middle of real change, it can be uncomfortable and painful, and most people find themselves wishing for the stability again.

That is exactly Bilbo's story. In the Shire he is comfortable. When the adventure shows up he is excited at first, but the farther he gets from home and the closer he gets to danger, the more all he wants is to be back in his safe little hobbit hole, sipping tea, smoking his pipe, having second breakfast. He misses all of it and keeps yearning for home. Then the trip ends, and he finds himself in a life that is very full and very rich. He has new friends among the dwarves and the elves, he comes home something like a hero, and he appreciates that life and what the journey brought him. I think he can enjoy the stability even more because he went through the growth and the suffering to get there. And by the start of The Lord of the Rings, at 111 years old, the one thing he wants is to go back out on an adventure. He had stability and wanted the adventure. He was in the adventure and wanted the stability. Then he got the stability back and missed the richness of new experience, and did not want the comfortable place anymore.

I think a lot of people go through the same cycle. When life is good, when you have your food and your shelter and your family, you are always wishing for something more. Climbing mount everest, seeing the northern lights, trying your luck at being a streamer, learning that new skill, opening a restaurant, etc. Adventure means turmoil and trial and having your perspective rearranged, which is scary. But most people who go through it come out wiser and more grateful for the life they have. So what I would say for now is that it is normal to want adventure when you are stable, and it is normal to want stability when you are in the adventure. The cycle is a healthy part of life. You cannot always live in turmoil and you cannot always live in stability. Find the right balance, and be open to whatever new period you are walking into.