Breadcrumbs: A Collection of Spiritual and Philosophical Essays, Francis J. Shaw [little readers .TXT] 📗

us as we age, because it just gets in the way. It’s no coincidence that we daydream less as we grow older, because the time for chasing shadows is over.

Frodo could have stayed content in the Shire, as can we, in ours. We can choose to manage the changes we experience as best we can or embrace the courage to seek the mystery. Choosing the second option is no easy path. Before Frodo said he would carry the ring, all he heard were reasons from others why it couldn’t be done and how many of those present wouldn’t work with some of the others even to try. Something in Frodo made him say yes and if we are going to respond to our call, it’s going to take asking one last question—a power question, unlike those we posed before.

It’s not a simple matter, to be taking lightly, because what we decide to ask is going to shape the journey to come and we can never look at life the same way again. We may not fully understand the change or impact, but like Frodo, there is no going back. It changes us, differently, as though we have been awoken from a dream, and the view of consequences we once had also changes, because time is running out. We realize we are standing on the arc of the rainbow we have sought and our quest for meaning changes.

For years, we developed complex coping mechanisms but haven’t found resolution. Midlife brings together all the feelings and turmoil to the surface with a clear message—we are meant to get to this point in our lives. We spend so much time dragging around our history. It contains our regrets, perceived errors and judgments and although it may be tempting to make confusion the culprit, what the middle of our story is really offering is clarity. It’s the letting go of what we thought we knew and understood that is the real turmoil.

We have focused so much of lives on an outward looking journey, when we are suddenly presented with a new life altering fact—the real journey...the real purpose for our lives is an inward journey. We shouldn’t be surprised. We didn’t arrive with jobs, clothes, houses, or cars and life is not about attaining them. We came with other gifts inside and despite trying to push them aside as myth; we need a powerful nudge to take them seriously, but we have worked hard to build our vision and it won’t die easy. Our first reaction is to rebel, because we struggle to see that all we have achieved so far doesn’t have the value we have assigned to it. Our illusions are shattered and buying the sports car or having plastic surgery is just stubborn resistance to hold on to a past that won’t deliver a future.

I find myself in the midpoint of my life and I am letting my power question drive me forward—what am I supposed to learn? It fills me, not with dread, but with a hunger to find my place in my story. I see, that I have at times been all the characters in Tolkien’s tale—moments when I have been a wizard, a hero, a stubborn dwarf, and an adventurous hobbit. Even, when I was lost, unkind, or inconsiderate, seeing Sméagol when I gaze in the mirror, I knew that he was once Gollum, a hobbit, and could be again.

And Frodo? If you have watched the wonderful Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson, you may also want to read Tolkien’s books, because it’s there you read that Frodo Baggins was 50 years old when the Fellowship of the Ring was formed—middle age called out to him to begin a new adventure. There is much to admire in Frodo’s journey, as there is when we look at our own. We just might see the difference we make when we risk all. We can make excuses; stay confused. We can read Frodo’s story and dismiss it as unrealistic fiction. We can dismiss our own as the same. We can decide, the small folk in this world cannot challenge the powerful who seek the ring, but for me, it’s not the most important part of Frodo’s story. It’s the knowledge he had. Even if he could safely cross Middle Earth, without being killed and destroy the ring under the nose of such great evil, there was no going back to the life he had in the Shire. His path, like ours, is not to return somewhere we have been, but to end up somewhere we have not. Aptly, Tolkien sent Frodo to the ‘Undying Lands,’ and the thought of it being there for all of us, is enough to embrace midlife as an opportunity and not a burden of confusion.

Tolkien’s fourth age begins with the destruction of the ring and the ascent of man and I am looking forward to what mine will bring, because the past has had its time with me. An adventure still beckons me forward, into the mystery, because the journey has always been clear—life is the ‘precious’ to seek.

FOUR

Progress and Timothy the Tortoise

TODAY, WE HAVE PLENTY OF options to connect with each other. If we want to see and hear our leaders, we can do so from the comfort of home, wrapped up snugly in front of a scrolling electric world that feeds our yearning for information and stimulus. 700 years ago, our forbearers new little of those who governed their lives and most seldom traveled more than ten miles away from their birthplace their entire lives. In 16th century England, mostly during the summer months, the monarch traveled around the realm meeting their subjects, having a wonderful time; eating, hunting, and reminding people who was the boss. Those chosen to host the large entourage, both excited and stressed, as entertaining the king or queen was an expensive and challenging honor. These journeys were called a Royal Progress.

Progress from the Latin, Progressus, translates as ‘an advance or going forward,’ and visiting the 20th century to the present; to the strides made in science, medicine, and technology, it’s tempting to say we have never progressed so fast or so well. Or, is it possible there are other times in our history that we would have felt the same way?

The 18th century introduced new vigor to the ideals of progress and the goals of the Enlightenment movement. Liberty, progress, reason, and tolerance, were some of the goals they espoused. Fresh on the heels of the luminaries who imparted new philosophies were the scientists and inventors marveling the world with machines and contraptions, which would make business more productive and our lives full of wonder.

In May, 1851, the Great Exhibition opened in London, providing a venue for showing off the fruits of the industrial revolution, economic gains, and increased per capita growth. It was an incredible spectacle. As 6 million visitors marveled at the exhibits over the course of 5 months, it’s doubtful too many were grown up children from the early 1800’s at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Any that had survived the long hours and terrible working conditions now had children of their own and probably had conversations we would instantly recognize.

Looking haggard, the twelve year old slumps onto a kitchen stool. “How was work, son?” his mother asks.

“Long…” he murmurs.

“It was a lot harder when I was your age. Oh yes…let me tell you…”

No, please don’t…he wanted to say, but he was too tired to bother.

She was right. Progress, slow and painful, had arrived from the days of the ‘dark, satanic mills,’8 In Britain, the 1847 Ten Hour Act, cut the hours for women and those under eighteen to ten hours a day. An improvement to the previous twelve hours a day, Monday through Friday, and nine hours on Saturdays. However, history is seldom a consolation, especially to the young. If he were to live another 40 years, exceeding the average life expectancy for the time, he would have witnessed the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in 1891. A full 67 years after the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in 1824.

Bouncing his grandson on his knee, he might ponder, the shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but the path of progress, follows a more mysterious trail.

The year 1855 seemed like many others around the same time and considering how much conflict simultaneously occurs in the world, it was a quiet year, except for the Crimean War, beginning in 1853. As Timothy the tortoise, ships mascot aboard HMS Queen, set off to war, he, like many others, may have been confused over the reasons for the impending conflict. Seemingly over control of religious sites in the Holy Land, this was not a religious conflict, nor a tyrant removal operation. Rather, Russia saw the possibilities of extending their influence as the Ottoman Empire headed into decline. While England and France, fearing a negative impact to their interests in the region, sided with the Turks against the Russian ‘Bear.’

Owning Empires was a messy business and as one of 33 conflicts Britain fought during the 19th century, the Crimean War, like so many, didn’t contain much of taking the moral high ground. What it did have in buckets were incompetent leaders on all sides, who unknowingly conspired to mess up at every opportunity. As public opinion grew against the conflict, it thankfully ended in 1856, along (in 1855) with the British government which launched the whole mess.

Perhaps fittingly, in 1856, Queen Victoria inaugurated the Victoria Cross, for valor. The common soldier had suffered much and they deserved another type of Royal Progress. There was also something for the 19th century science nerds. The war had showcased some technology firsts—the role of the telegraph, use of the railways, and one of the first conflicts recorded using the relatively new media of photography. Still, one can only ponder that as the last shots were fired, the words on people’s lips were Poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson’s, in his catchy take on the futile Charge of the Light Brigade into the ‘valley of death in 1854.’

‘Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.9

Despite three fires, HMS Queen and Timothy the tortoise survived the war. No doubt glad to leave his sea legs behind and feel ‘England’s green and pleasant land’10 under his feet once again.

Perhaps we would like to think of progress as linear events that gently arc, as it’s a picture that provides comfort of being on the right path. If events of the 1850’s have any wisdom to share, we would expect to see it, brightly shinning as the midday sun. For in 1855, the word