<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Newly Deceased
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/sting.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: LOTR and your Weltanschauung
LOTR really saved me. I first read it when I was 12 or 13 and it didn't quite open to me then. But then when I was 14 I read it again and lo! a magic gate opened and led me to another world. That was really good, because I was having a hard time at school, I was bullied around etc and my days were misery. So I entered Tolkien's world and that was my hiding place, the only thing that kept me sane for the next two years.
Now I'm twenty-one and I am reading LOTR again, probably for the seventh (or so) time. I don't know what I'd be if I hadn't read the books. They've taught me compassion, patience, pity and mercy. "Deserves death. Indeed he does. And many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so quick to take what you can not give." That's a quote I use frequently. I guess I've become a pacifist too. I don't know whether LOTR is that much in my daily life any longer now that my life is back on track, but all the characters have become my close friends and it sometimes feels just like Elbereth is watching me with a smile on her face...
Weirdo? I guess I'm not the only one. Middle-Earth lives in my heart and imagination, and is as true to me as this world I live in.
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