last week i worked 50 hours. not much time left over for thought. but i did learn something. a very sad and sobering something. it is this:
in my life i have yet to experience the power of true action.
i realized that what i have been experiencing is passion, in the philosophical sense: being acted upon.
in other words, i have felt the power of emotion, felt the power of joy and sorrow and the fantastic intermingling thereof with nostalgia, etc…
and yet, when emotions die, as they do moments after their inspirations, they leave nothing, save perchance a fading resolve that crumbles under the weight of its duty.
real change, real progress of character must come instead from decision, from action. emotions can ignite but it is the will that must drive–however the will will, be it on its own power or only by grace [i certainly know into which category falls mine].
but, i think, it is exactly this sustained force of willful avowedness which i do not posess. and so i have yet to discover the possibilities of growth which may be unlocked by that key.
i am young frodo, and my passions are the shire: i’m still in love with little brooks and streams to paddle down, soft meadows and pleasant hazy evenings. in my heart i am not yet old enough to perceive the majesty of the misty mountains, the whispering magic of lothlorien, the echoing stillness of moria, or the piercing white silver of ecthelion. i am not old enough to desire more than my little comfortable corner of personhood; not old enough to realize that sooner or later i had better be off Questing, or my little world could abrubtly…end…
so i stay, and paddle down the streams, and lie in the meadows on sunny afternoons. an easy life, replete with occasional, exciting bouts of emotional energy, but nothing so serious as to be…difficult. an easy life…
but there are times, like now, when i glance at the road beneath my feet and something deep inside stirs…an ancient dragon halfway waking from sleep, one eye open…there are times when the road seems more like a stream, flowing faster and faster into other streams, all leading somewhere–and those times i want to follow the soft suggestion of the road, no less urgent for being whispered, to go.
