This past week I've started re-watching the Lord of the Rings movies. This time, I've noticed how much time permeates the trilogy. The story is so self reflective; Samwise wonders whether their story will ever be made into song, if they'll sing about Frodo and the Ring. Bilbo writes about his journey in There and Back Again. The fellowship encounters ancient statues, ruined cities, the frozen trolls, mythology forgotten, traces left behind, cities turned to tombs. The ents speak and move so slowly; the time of the elves is ending; Arwen must choose between immortality and love; gollum spends hundreds of years in a cave; Gandalf returns from blackness and fire; Frodo's journey is so long.
Amidst all this, the world of man is fleeting. Aragorn struggles against fate, against the path that's been laid out before him. Can he act of his own accord or is he doomed to repeat the past? As the ring calls to Sauron, the past calls to man.
One of my favourite lines in the movie is one that Gandalf speaks: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
Seems so simple..
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