As I sit here on the eve of my third year at Emory University, I am battered into a quiet discontent.
I am fond of saying life is an icky, sticky business, chockful of more complexities than most of us are willing to admit. That has never been truer for me, than now.
It is not only a wider world beset by mistrust and malcontent (or at least a world where those things are pushed to the forefront) that I find myself in, but one where my own personal, professional, and romantic quandaries have become ever clearer.
I have a particular fondness for the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, as my fiction writing will often show. Re-watching Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed trilogy of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings this summer, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly engrossed in the story, perhaps more so than ever before.
See, in the epic, Frodo Baggins is pulled from his quiet, quaint, countryside and thrust into the heart of a danger so powerful that none but he can defeat it. What's more is that Frodo never asks for such a task. He never yearns for such toils and trials as he receives on his path to Mordor. Yet, by way of ancestry and sheer dumb luck, the task of carrying the Ring of Power falls to him.
And while I don't pretend my life or story is anything nearly as epic as Tolkien's legendarium, the leaving of home is something that has always greatly troubled me, as it did Frodo and his companions. Just as they traded the green of the Shire for the harshness of Mordor, I will soon swap the quiet cornfields and gentle blue Lake Michigan of America's Dairyland for the concrete jungle of Atlanta.
As I wrote some two years ago when I first packed up my life in a few spare cardboard boxes, that transience throws me. Home is a place of solidity, and as a college student shuffling 800-mile stints on a fairly regular basis, solidity has frankly been lacking.
Yet, here is where I must correct myself. Life lived in reality is infinitely more complex than life enumerated by story.
That doesn't mean the story is unimportant. See, I've always viewed writing as a liquidation of that complexity. We as humans need to make sense of the world in some fashion, and so we do so by way of figures and maps and charts and song and dance and written word. And while all of these can capture a snapshot of humanity's infinite nuance, helpful even in defining it, none tell the entire tale.
As such, I feel perhaps I have been a bit hasty and unclear in my comparison. While The Lord of the Rings is an attractive story, I don't think it can hardly be a total stand-in for my own life. My soon-to-come trip to Atlanta is hardly a solitary walk into Mordor (not that I could simply do that, anyway), nor will I be largely alone as Frodo was for the better part of his quest.
I may have suffered hardships this summer and in the time preceding. In all likelihood, I will suffer hardships in times to come, but not all need be doom and gloom. There are those who stand true and fast with me yet, who wish me well, wish me love, and dream to see me succeed. And I am no novice. As an old teacher of mine told me a few days ago, I've been through two years of this already. That has to count for something.
So, as I sit here on the eve of my third year, I have advice for myself and for the world-at-large. Breathe. Smile. Treat well and in all honesty, you will be treated well in kind. The world is a large place, and not everywhere will be as green or as tranquil as the Shire. Yet, not everywhere will be hostile, and teeming with orcs. Many places will harbor their own adventures and their own homes, and friends old and new ready to offer a hand up the mountain if only one should ask for it.
