I read a lot, and I read almost anything anyone recommended to me when I was in my twenties. One novel I read was ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and my god it was a slog. I had a hard time staying engaged and I was very glad to be done with it.
During COVID I was very much, well, lost, I suppose. What I mean is I like routine, I like predictability, I like knowing what the day would bring. It seemed like every hour brought news and new information and it was hard to know if that information was important or not. We were literally figuring things out on the fly.
Lockdown was hard for me. I liked waking up, having coffee, going to the gym, going to work, and traveling for my job every few weeks. But within a few days the gym (along with everything else) closed, and work travel halted.
I was restless and felt confined. Like many people I sought comfort and distraction. I read a lot about what other people were doing to stay occupied and distracted during such a tumultuous time. People online were talking about what they were doing, watching, and reading and someone mentioned that they were reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as they felt comforted by such a gloomy fictional word.
The word ‘gloomy’ stuck with me for some reason so I picked up the massive book and gave it another try.
It had been decades since I read it and in the years hence I became a more patient person and a more patient reader. It took months to get to the end but I not only understood what they meant by gloomy (what a great word) but I also liked it a lot more. I am not a huge fantasy fan, whether movies or books, but I liked it well enough.
As I am wont to do, I found myself falling down the rabbit hole of learning everything I could about Tolkien and the creation of the book. Not because I was in love with the book or anything but the creative process can be fascinating.
On a related note, I am not a Led Zeppelin fan but the band itself has always been intriguing to me. I will happily watch documentaries about them despite liking only a few of their songs.
Anyway, Tolkien wrote a lot, and he also wrote a lot about writing. One thing he talked about was something he called The Long Defeat.
“I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’…”
I can’t speak for what he meant specifically, but the way I see it is that defeat and failure is inevitable. No matter our efforts, no matter how determined we are, no matter our sincerity, we will fail. We will fall. Evil will win, and not necessarily evil the way Sauron was evil, but evil in the sense of good people failing to do what is right.
This is all very depressing, isn’t it? It’s hard to be positive about the world in a broader sense at the moment. We have a world to take care of but taking care of it doesn’t really feel like a priority for people in charge. We have other humans that need a hand but we shrug and turn inwards to our own “needs”.
Things seem to be going in directions that feel impossible to return from. It feels too late to reverse the damage we’ve done to the environment, the political system, the economy, education, and social services. Things are racing towards what is profitable to the people in command, leaving everything else behind.
I am reminded a lot about what Fitzgerald wrong in ‘The Great Gatsy’:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
When I was younger I read that the sun would eventually run out of hydrogen and we would all DIE. So THAT was depressing lol. I remember thinking what was the point in ANYTHING if that was going to happen. It was a jarring realization that one day we would all be gone. Everything. Humanity, our history, our mark in the universe, caused by the gradual cooling of a life giving star.
Of course this won’t happen for billions of years and I’ll be long gone by then, but the eventual end of everything resonated with me.
The Long Defeat, I suppose.
So, what is the point? What is the point of anything? We are lucky to have eighty years or so to live our lives, a fraction of a blink in the eyes of the infinity.
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.“
I think humans want to matter. I think we want to contribute to the world in the sense we want to make things better for someone else. Whether we want to create a vaccine that can reduce the threat of a virus or just make life a little nicer for someone we love.
Much has been said and speculated about what Tolkien meant by The Long Defeat, but I think his point was made in his seminal work. “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”
I think fighting for is the point. We know we’re going to fail, we know we aren’t going to overcome the inevitable. At some point our bodies will turn against us, we will age and we will get sick and one day we won’t be able to get better. Our financial commitments grow and what’s left in our paycheck is no longer enough to sustain our basic necessities.
Life, like arguments, can’t be won. No one wins life. We will hopefully have wonderful moments and wonderful people in our lives and countless things that make us happy. We will hopefully accomplish things in our lives that we worked towards. But death comes for us. No matter what we do, we can’t stave this off forever, whether we succumb to illness or we are hit by a distracted driver.
On a personal (and intentionally cryptic) note, please, please, PLEASE don’t use your cell phone when you’re driving. It is never safe to do this… not even in a parking lot.
Even though we will all lose in the end, not only as individuals but also humanity in a broader sense (don’t forget about the sun… if we make it that long), a life is still worth fighting for.
Everything I have was earned. It’s not easy (and getting harder every month) owning a home. But I have one (at least until November since I just paid my monthly mortgage) because I work for it. I have a wonderful marriage in part because we worked for what we have. I am relatively healthy because I take care of my body.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that hard work = success. No matter how healthy I am, I am still prone to getting hit by a distracted driver in a parking lot.
I have had enough experiences to know that any and all aspects of life can change in a blink. Knowing this can be depressing. Like, what is the literal point? Why do anything? Why do your laundry when your clothes are just going to get dirty again? Why avoid cupcakes when your body is going to slowly and gradually fall apart over time? Why not live in the moment?
Why? Because no one knows how many moments you’ll have. Sure, if I knew I was going to die TODAY, I probably would make certain decisions. But I don’t know that. Living for the moment sounds inspiring but what if you’re wrong?
Not to keep going back to Tolkien, but he was right when he wrote “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
On Saturday I did yard work even though the weeds will keep growing and I’ll need to do it again in a week. That night I shaved my legs even though the hair will start growing back as soon as I step out of the shower. I do these things because weeds and body hair are inevitable and persistent but it’s nice to have a pretty yard and it’s nice to have smooth legs.
Tonight I am going to dress up and be as pretty as I can be. I will do this knowing that I will never pass as a cisgender woman, but I will do this because this is who I am. Someday I will not be able to do this.
I don’t know when I will die, I don’t know when the quality of my life will start diminishing. I see echoes of it every day, though. My vision isn’t as good as it was, I get tired more easily then I did a few years ago, my mind is a little foggier than it used to be. I find myself struggling to find the words to express my thoughts (at least out loud).
Life humbles you but there is beauty in that too. Whenever I think I know it all I am (eventually) delighted and grateful to realize how much I don’t know.
Let’s wrap up this morbid but hopefully uplifting post with one more quote from Vonnegut:
And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
Be kind, babies.
Love, Hannah
