It's been a long time. The last time I posted on this blog, I was a sack of mixed feelings, elated by a return to my home and confused by my feelings for a girl whom I was not meant to be with. Since then, I have changed a lot, and I like to think that it could be considered "maturing." I've gained a great deal of humility after getting dismal grades in my sophomore year of college. I changed the course I envisioned for myself in life as a result, going from the firm ground of a future career as a doctor to wildly uncertain and clouded future career as a historian. I've grown farther from some friends and closer to others. I am pretty sure I'm a lot more patient now than I was. And, I've fallen all over a girl whom I've known for years, and now can call my girlfriend. My life has been very, very blessed in these past two years.
The full scale to which my perspective has shifted, though, hit me this morning as I finished my second marathon of The Lord of the Rings trilogy a mere twenty hours after I had finished my first marathon for the summer. The story has always touched me in ways that nothing else has, but this time, instead of merely tearing up or getting misty-eyed as I have in the past, I wept. I have almost certainly seen these films well over one hundred times by now, but this was the first time that I have ever openly wept while watching The Return of the King. It caught me off guard. For the first time, the emotions which I feel every time I watch or read the story saw an external outlet. I laughed in glee as Barad-dûr crumbled. I cried when Orodruin erupted in fire and ash and the heroes of the Morannon thought that Frodo and Sam were lost. When Frodo looked at Sam and said "It's gone. It's done." I choked out something between a sob and a laugh. The burden of the Ring-bearer was finally lifted, and his mind fully restored. The cheerful and caring nature of Frodo was once more evident, when had the Ring not been destroyed, that would have been perhaps the greatest loss. "I can see the Shire, Sam. The Brandywine River. Bag End. The lights in the party tree." This line completely did me in--for the first time. Never before have those words kindled such a fierce joy in my heart, and I had to get a third tissue at that point.
It was not the last time I was to be caught off-guard in the film, though; having cried already, I assumed that I would sob quite a bit when Aragorn said "My friends--you bow to no one." I was very emotional at that line, but not a tear was to be found. It's been quite a few years since I decided that my body makes perhaps the least sense to me of anyone, but it still seemed strange that I would not cry there if I was tearing up over every other line. Surely, then, I would at least cry in the Green Dragon--the scene which has always brought out the strongest emotions from any of the three films for me. But no, it was not until Frodo's heartbreaking good-bye in Mithlond that I sobbed again, and this time I cried well into the credits. It was probably around the time that I stopped weeping that I started to put together just why I was so emotionally unstrung watching the film this time. In the past, when I've watched the films, I've identified so strongly as a soul apart. At home in Slovakia, I was the son of two wonderful parents who were very much born and raised in the United States of America. I wasn't seen as fully Slovak, which is ultimately an undeniable fact. But when here in the USA, I am by culture and mindset a foreigner, as unfamiliar and alien to bi-partisan politics and to deep-fried food as any Slovak. It was only my fellow Third Culture Kids and I who could understand each other. They were the friends to whom I latched on most strongly. I always related to the scene of the four hobbits in The Green Dragon at the end of The Return of the King because it perfectly illustrates their sense of being foreign to their own culture. It was what I knew.
Over the last two years, though, I have matured. My friendships have broadened. Along with a general development of my own understanding of Christianity has come a greater value on love as that singular thing which is most important in this existence. Without even realizing it, I've added a lot of love and appreciation to my friendships over the last two years. To all of my friendships. Now, even though I still do feel like an outsider sometimes in the USA (okay, actually quite frequently), I have more friends to take comfort in. I have friends who are from the USA who understand me. No longer do I feel like the alien in the midst of the crowd. I have many, many people who love me perhaps even as much as I love them. I am fairly certain that at no time in my life have I enjoyed simply living as much as I do now. No matter what I do or where I go, I have people who care about me and who are dear to me.
It's my experiences with these wonderful individuals that I consider to be my greatest treasures; cherished memories of times both painful and marvelous. That's probably why Inception impacts me so strongly, with that which Cobb and Mal both hold on to so much being the experience of growing old together. Knowing that the line "You're waiting for a train," heralds the shared end of that time together makes it one of the most forceful lines in film for me. In the last few days I have been thinking a lot about my own experiences with my friends, and how marvelous it is to share someone's life with them and to watch with my own eyes as they grow and change. Mostly this recent surge in thoughts about experiences with loved ones is a result of a dream I had this past week, influenced largely by both Inception and The Tree of Life. At the point in which I became aware of the dream, I was a passenger on a train with my parents and one of my sisters. It was a second-class car, without cabins but still with seats which were quite nice. We were traveling through salt flats, which were broken up by fierce ocean waves which apparently made for good surfing. It was a pleasant journey. As we progressed, though, I began to recognize people on the train. At first, I recognized people from Houghton. Then I noticed a few people from Europe. Then a friend who was supposed to be in India. I realized that all of the people on the train were people from my life; people who had played roles both large and small. Some I had no more than passed on the street once in my past. Others have been instrumental in shaping who I am. I realized that we were all dead. As I had traveled through life with these people, so too I now traveled with them in death. It was a journey to the afterlife, and I realized that God had given me this one last experience--that most cherished treasure--to share with these individuals. It was a wonderful feeling. I really do hope that something along those lines occurs when I die, and that I can share that final journey with the people of my life. There was a feeling of great and overwhelming sorrow the arose in tandem with the wonder, though, for if I and all those with me were dead, then we could not share in the experiences of those who were still alive. That is, to me, the saddest thing about death. I would no longer participate in the lives of my loved ones, or even of total strangers. Almost as bad was the thought that maybe I had not been able to say goodbye, and to tell those who survived me just how much they meant to me. It was a journey of mixed feelings, with sorrow and joy equally great and neither exclusive to the other. When we reached heaven, I woke up. That dream has plagued me since, though, and led to this unusually extensive thinking about my friends. I wept when Sam and Frodo are on their outcrop of rock because Frodo has regained memory of his experiences. He remembers what it is to live and to share that with friends. When Frodo says goodbye at the Grey Havens, I cried because he is drawing to an end his shared time with loved ones. He is going on a ship toward his own eventual death, and so he says goodbye not to three mere hobbits, but to three whom he loves most in the world, and with whom he has experienced the world. Their shared joys and hurts and sorrows are over, and they are parting ways. I cried because I could not help but relate that to my own feelings on when I leave those whom I love on that final journey.
In the end, I cried watching The Return of the King this time because I love my friends dearly, and I saw that friendship mirrored poorly in the four Hobbits and what they shared together. Friends, thank you for being my friends and for sharing my life's journey with me. I hope that at the end we do get one final trip together.
