And it slips through our fingers

[Child of the 7th Age]

Originally posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim
That being, the diminishing of the world, of a race, of an age, can be compared with the diminishing of a single human life. We have our childhood, we swiftly reach the peak of our physical powers and quite often our happiness; certainly the peak of our hope. Then these slowly decline. We get weaker physically, we stop hoping so much and start looking back much more. We often become more melancholy.

Do we stop hoping? Does hope even diminish as we age? I don't believe that. I might have said this when I was younger, but not now. I wonder if you will still feel this way as you get older.

I do sense melancholy in Tolkien, a wistfulness and an acknowledgment that there can never be complete victory, at least in the frame of this world. Yet I never sense loss of hope. Perhaps we are missing the boat on this thread. Yes, in Tolkien's mind the long defeat is there, but so too are the victories won at such a hard price. To take those away, to ignore or belittle them, is to wipe away what makes it all worthwhile. The diminishing is there, yet so is the meaning that stands behind our actions.

Frodo was injured, not just in his body but in his heart. Even so, there is no sense at the end of the book that his sacrifice was without meaning as I often get from reading so many other contemporary novels. We do not ultimately know what happens to Frodo, but we do know that his friends made sure that he would be taken some place where he would at least have another chance. If the diminishing and the melancholy are there in Middle-earth, so too are the flashes of meaning and a treasure like the phial of Galadriel that symbolizes light and hope and can help lead us down the path.

In the last analysis, when I set the book down, it is not the diminishing that sticks in my mind but rather that promise that Man will not give up trying, no matter how hard it gets. Whether we are talking about the course of history or a single individual who walks the open road, subject to the vagaries of life and aging, it is this presence of hope that draws me back to the story.