Note 4

I spent the day working, but I tend to take some time out of the day to distract myself and follow my interests; such as cooking or gaming or books. I tend to flit from topic to topic to rest my brain from doing things I don’t find all that interesting.

Today, I watched a video concerning the Lord of the Rings story, specifically the part within the Fellowship of the Ring that concerns Tom Bombadil. The person who created the video (whom I highly recommend-Matt Colville) spoke about how he really didn’t like the part concerning Tom Bombadil, nor really understood why it was there since the tone of the chapters don’t match what comes before nor what comes after. This is a common opinion (not liking Tom Bombadil) but I do like his take on why Tom is there-long story short-Tom embodies the mythic ideal that all of creation can be dealt with wisdom if one only understood. The barrow-wights, old man willow etc he dealt with by just understanding them and not exactly confronting them, but working with them. Matt went on to explain that Tom’s realm is the last one the hobbits pass through before they go into the ‘real world’ and that in the end, Frodo passes-through the ‘real world’ into the west to experience what he did when he was around Tom.

As fascinating that this is to me-the biggest revelation for me was to hear another person think so deeply and speak so seriously about something that sustained me most of my life felt very good to see. That serious of books was something I treasured and I was told over and over again that it was junk literature not worth much. It was just satisfying to see someone share the same point of view.

Be well