Is your tea cold?

When I watched the Hobbit from the legendary master JRR Tolkien, I was taken on a wonderful, amazing, wild ride. What a book, what a movie. With the amazing imagination of Tolkien, (although I fully believe that he was a traveller between parallel worlds, describing to his avid readers in amazing imagery, the worlds he had visited), combined with the mastery and passion of Peter Jackson, you are again taken away from the uncomplicated, ordinary life you lead.

It starts with the attack on poor Bilbo, by the possibility of adventure in his life. Would you take that step? Would you give up tea in front of the fire, would you give up reading of adventures in faraway places, to go on a breath taking journey, from which you could possibly not return? Would you?

Why is it that the most engrossing of books or movies has the underlining drama of the fight between good and evil? Enormous trolls wanting to make you their supper, ugly goblins hunting you. If you knew that would happen, would you take the step? Would you run out of your door and meet up with them? Maybe not, we are all so set in our ways. Rise, work, sleep. Day after day. So used to tea in front of the fire. What could be better than curling up with a book and watching the time slip by, while fighting evil in distant lands, a long time ago? The ordinary becomes the norm. Everything out of the normal is a threat to your existence. Existence? Really??

Then one day you look up. The sun in setting slowly in the sky. Your tea is cold. Your neck feels cramped, and you suddenly feel your heart contracting as you realize life has passed you by. You have become so used to the nothings of life that you have forgotten what it means to live, what it means to be truly alive. 

We need the evil wizard to hunt us through the dark woods. We need the scary and unseen, the not knowing what’s next. We need the uncertainty. It’s in the chase through the woods, that you find your reason for living. You will find your strength, your inner dragon, when threatened. It is in the fear of the unknown and the uncertainty, that the new and amazing is born. You cannot be truly you, by doing nothing. You cannot find the inner special being, born to shine, by watching as the world slips by. You have to take the step. You have to take the deepest of breaths and run.

My tea is cold. It is time.