“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can.”– J.R.R. Tolkien
At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo recites a poem about a never ending road upon his return to the Shire. He later sings a song on this same theme at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings when he leaves the Shire on one last journey to Rivendell at the end of his days.
“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”
Nothing stops the ever-wandering road. It’s a metaphor for us, for time. We’re not wanderers in the world in the way our ancestors were. We can get anywhere we need to be in minutes, search the globe in seconds, get delivering in a day.
But time is the road we all share. It goes on and on, down from the dawn where it began. And we must follow if we can.
How quickly we lose sight of how much time we really, truly have. In the rush to get things done, always preparing, always planning, always busying…in a world where the reward for a job well done is more work…we lose sight of just how long that road is. Then, we’re surprised when we look behind and see how much road has passed behind us that we didn’t even notice.
Look where we are in August. Look how close September is. Look to the end of the year. How fast are things happening? How mad is the rush to get to the next thing?
But really…how far away is the end of the road?
The truth is, there is no deadline, because there is no destination. Every moment of our lives is both a point on the road and the point of our arrival. Slow down. Take a breath. Learn. Read. Make something slowly and carefully. And remember: school is three weeks away still. That’s almost a month. That’s 21 days. 504(ish) hours.
That’s a lot of time, and a long, long road.
Settle your pace and play a little. You have time.