The previous chapter ends on an unclear note. Pippin has stabbed a troll, but it fall on top of him and begins to crush him. Pippin thinks, "So it ends as I guessed it would," and we are told his thought begins to fly away. However, it hears one final thing, shouts that "The Eagles are Coming!" The chapter ends. What eagles? And what of Pippin? What of the others? Is this, indeed, how it ends?
At the start of the chapter, the Creative Wizard makes the timeline clear: we are now going to learn what happened to Frodo and Sam even before the Battle of the Pellenor Fields. We know what hopelessness their companions will face. Will what Frodo and Sam do make a difference to their fate?
Sam still has the Ring. From what we learned from the Mouth of Sauron in the previous chapter, it is possible that Frodo is dead, and that Sam will die. As Sam searches for Frodo, a bleak picture is painted. Mordor was built up as a terrible and dreadful place, and Sam's experience aligns very much with that foreshadowing. He begins to find the awful nature of the tower too much to handle.
The dead bodies: the emptiness; the dank black walls that in the torchlight
seemed to drop with blood; the fear of sudden death lurking in doorway
or shadow; and behind all his mind the waiting watchful maline at the gate: it was almost
more than he could screw himself to face. He would have welcomes a fight - with
not too many enemies at a time - rather than this hideous brooding uncertainty.
But that's silly - we know Sam isn't much of a fighter. He can when he must, but even then in terror. So why does our cowardly Sam want a fight?
Fighting is quick. In fighting you win, or you die. And dying is easy. It doesn't require much effort. By spoiling for a fight, Sam is asking for his struggle to be over. Either he is victorious, or he dies. Either outcome is preferable to a long slog.
We see this in our own lives. We want tangible advancement, or a clear sign of our failure. But the in-between is frustrating. It's difficult to measure, and do we ever love our measurements!
We measure temperature, we measure wind speed, we measure intelligence, we measure grades, we measure luminosity, we measure sharpness, we measure opacity, we measure success, we measure how we measure. Seasons of Love, a song ostensibly about the ridiculousness of measurements, suggests measuring a year in love. That's fine, but why measure at all? What if we could endure without measurements, or at least without such constant measurements.
One of my favorite things about summer camps is that, unlike school, measurements are few. The goal of most camps is adventure, relaxation, joy, fun, and friendship. These things are difficult to measure. Contrast this with teaching, my year-round job (And the year-round experience of campers), and measurements abound. Not only do teachers measure student success, we measure our assessment tools to ensure they are doing what we want, and sometimes we assess those tools. It's an ever-widening circle. And while one answer is, "But if you're going to measure things, you should measure them well," we rarely wonder why measure so much at all.
More than not, life is not a series of fights, not a set of checkpoints to pass. It looks that way in retrospect because that's the easiest way for us to digest an entire lifespan, to look at the major markers, but life is generally more of a slog. We move forward with little understanding that we are moving forward, we succeed without feeling success, because in our mind success comes with balloons and trumpets and cake, even when it generally doesn't. One frustration I felt over the summer was that I wasn't getting enough positive feedback for doing my job well. But why do I need that? I was doing my job well and being given guidance when I was screwing up. I should be able to have, recognize, and enjoy success without a party thrown in my honor.
When one completes a project, the completion is seen as the success. But the work should be, too. Did it take 30 days to complete? Then each day, or at least most days, was a success. Saying that only completing the project was a success devalues all that work. Hard work isn't necessary for success, hard work is success.
Sam wants a sign, he wants something tangible that he can hold up and say "Ah! I've made it!" He wants to battle orcs, kill them, and know he is victorious. But he doesn't get that. He's forced to slog through the brooding uncertainty. But he remains unaware that he is, in fact, getting closer to Frodo.
Only when Sam has found his master does he celebrate. But this is not his only success: He snuck around Cirith Ungol without getting caught, he followed the voices of orcs he heard, and earlier he had defeated Shelob. But he will not realize those successes. He only sees the token of success - a reunion. It's tunnel vision.
If you go through life looking for tokens, tangible signs of your success, you will find yourself often disappointed. There are few moments when we can showcase our worth, and fewer when others will just tell us. Positive reinforcement is wonderful, but we shouldn't depend on it.
I think the hardest thing to learn graduating college is that, now, you're expected to work and do your job but not get "measured." Well, you get paid - that's your measurement. Every 2 weeks you get a token of your success. Money. But money is a funny thing. Our culture loves and loathes it. We see it as a phony measure of our worth, but it's the main measure we have.
School gives you constant measurement, and many forms of it. Society after school gives you one measurement: your salary. That's it. That's how you know your importance. And that generally drives people to misery. They want another measurement (Hence: Seasons of Love).
But why measure at all? Why stay in that mind-frame, where measurements are paramount? What if we could transcend them. Rather than look for constant tokens of success to keep us going, why not acknowledge they just won't come, or at least not regularly. Instead we can move forward with a few goals in mind, a few objectives to complete to reach those goals, and then slog through whatever mire comes, knowing, through our focus and determination, that we're headed in the right direction, even if sometimes it feels futile.
Most goals take longer to reach than we would like. Don't go looking for a fight because you're tired of the wait. Don't let your impatience to be done ruin the long, slow work you've been doing. Rather than despair each day that you still aren't done, celebrate each day you get closer to your goal.
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