LOTR and your Weltanschauung

[Evenspire]

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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/nenya.jpg" align=absmiddle> LOTR and your Weltanschauung


I reat LOTR when I was 12 or 13. It changed me in a profound manner. It may have even saved me.

I had been very athletic, but when my father died when I was eleven, and we moved to a new town, I spent my time reading and re-reading LOTR. I daydreamed of Frodo and his companions, making up new adventures for most of them, making up new characters.

I began winning awards in creative writing and poetry though I had no interest in writing previously. I took extra credit courses in English in high school and college. I became an English tutor and went on to study other languages like French, Russian and Italian. I might think that it was LOTR that made me think in terms of academics rather than athletic pursuits. I went on to work as an International Studies Specialist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

I don't know if I would have been inclined to pursue a career in academics or not had I not read LOTR, but I rather think not. I beleive that I would have gone into Horticulture and Landscape Design as a profession, rather than an avocation as it is now. But I'm more grateful for the entertainment that LOTR has brought me in endless hours of imagination.

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