>>9281643
>In other words, books like The Hobbit are not necessarily supposed to inspire trips to far-flung lands, but rather to restore the freshness of familiar surroundings right in front of our faces. Once you discover this doorway to realms beyond, you’re able to see the world through a mythological lens, and find that there are hidden dimensions even within the walls of one’s hobbit hole. Once you’ve been there and back again, your perspective is forever changed; you begin to see things as they really are. Everything from the view outside your apartment to your commute to work can become more meaningful, even magical.
>That Tolkien could step through this threshold whenever he desired, his otherwise bourgeoisie lifestyle notwithstanding, is what set him apart from other “hobbits.” And it is what accounts for his obliviousness to the allure of physical travel. As one of his biographers put it, “his imagination did not need to be stimulated by unfamiliar landscapes and cultures”; that he could simply sit down at his desk and immediately begin exploring the terrain of Middle-earth explains why he “did not altogether care very much where he was.” For Tolkien, his domestic routine, no matter how familiar, remained perennially fresh.
>Tolkien’s immersion in his imagination did not represent an escape from reality, but a reacquaintance with it. He saw clearer than most the way in which even the most ordinary life is filed with epic quests, wrenching conflicts, and the heroic choice between courage and compassion, and greed and selfishness. So that despite the “narrow” scope of his life, one cannot help feeling it was far more expansive than those who fill their Instagram profiles with photos of their globe-trotting travels.
>What Tolkien understood is that when it comes to life’s most important journeys — quests of spirituality, self-discovery, and self-mastery — location is irrelevant.
Yes