Imagine, if you will, your own personal Shire. In this hypothetical world, you are safe and comfortable, and you can take your afternoon tea whenever you like. You read to your heart's content and maybe even take a stroll when you're feeling up to it. To you, the word "adventure" is as heinous as can be; it's something that should be avoided at all costs. You are alive, and you plan to stay that way for many, many years, but are you really living?
If you were Bilbo Baggins, hero of J.R.R Tolkien's "The Hobbit," then you would answer with a confident "yes!" You would be fairly certain of this answer too, that is until a pesky wizard came to your door with a bunch of dwarfs, an impossible task, and an entirely new understanding of the word you tried so hard to avoid. In fact, along the way, you might even come to realize that nothing is ever as simple as you think, and that even certainty is somewhat over rated.
But we can't all be Bilbo Baggins. Some of us have regular lives to lead, and most to all of us have never even seen a dragon, let alone battled one. We don't need a dragon though to know that Tolkien, in all his literary glory, has captured something rare and true about human nature, all wrapped up in a four-foot-tall package.
Just like us, Bilbo is a walking contradiction. Half of him is a culture of comfort and safety, and never leaving home. The other half is a nagging voice telling him that he must go out into the unknown, especially because no one seems to think that he can. In a split second of panic, he sides with one half over the other, like any of us would. He leaves his hobbit hole, and everything he has ever known, to go on an adventure.
And sure, he might be partially persuaded by grand fantasies of the wonders that could await him beyond the boundaries of the Shire, but he is not without warning of the dangers that could lurk there as well, the "bad adventures" as Tolkien calls them. That's just it though, they aren't "dangers" or "evils" or "troubles," they are "bad adventures." While they are not necessarily good things, they are still qualified as adventures, which implies that they are not merely useless obstacles, but lessons learned in the making.
I think Tolkien would agree that our lives are a collection of "bad adventures" shoved together with all of the "good adventures" to create one big adventure of its own right. Things like lost luggage or awkward first dates are bad adventures. Things like seeing the world or falling in love are good adventures. Neither can exist without the other. Without either, we are nothing. Maybe Bilbo understood this, and maybe he didn't, but either way he still walked out that door.
And then years later he came back from his journey, and everyone from his old home thought he was insane. They couldn't understand why he would do something so foolish as to leave a perfectly good life of comfort for some reckless quest. They whispered about the ways that he had changed, but those very same changes allowed him to brush the whispers right off his back without a second thought. He could have left again, off on some other fantastic journey, but instead he decided to live out the rest of his days in the home that he had once known. The only part that was different was him.
This just goes to show that Tolkien understood, maybe better than anyone, that the most important adventures are the ones that go on right inside our own heads. Places are only temporary, scars heal, and tired feet can be soothed with a good rest. The things that we take from these experiences though, will last a lifetime. So take the good with the bad, and go forth knowing that it's all part of the ride. Listen to the part of you that wants to break free, but keep in mind that there is no shame in going back home when you're done. Live life to the fullest, but don't forget the value of relaxing with a good book every once in a while. Enjoy live one adventure at a time, as Tolkien intended.
