I don’t know if I have mentioned this before but my 3 favourite characters from LOTR were Aragorn, Gandalf & Tom Bombadil.

I have only understood recently why. It’s because I have always aspired to have the righteous courage of Aragorn, the wisdom of Gandalf and the worldly detachment & simplicity of Bombadil.

The more I go on in life, the more I am pulled away by the life of Tom Bombadil. Where I am just left alone to live my life happily with my wife and make merry my thoughts.

But there was a reason I was attracted to all three characters and not just one. If I lean entirely on one, I will be ignoring two parts of myself. The aspiration of standing up for what’s right and the continuous yearning to attain knowledge. Which eventually will muddy my personal happiness anyway. And so I realized that perhaps I need equal measures of each attribute to aspire to improve within me each day.

Maybe it is not a good idea to aspire to uplift only one character trait within yourself at the expense of others. And maybe it is not a good idea to take inspiration from just one source. So that is when I came to terms with the fact that maybe, neither one of those 3 are my favourite characters but all of them are my favourite characters. It depends on the situation and moment, which gets elevated most.

Of course all of this is make-belief. As are all stories, mythologies & theologies. But they are supposed to show us something. We learn through stories & narratives. What we take from stories, feeds in our perceptions and better perceptions create better outcomes.