Monday, Jan. 05, 2004 | 12:30 PM

Over the next month, expect a couple essays on The Lord of the Rings. I�ve been eating, sleeping, and breathing LOTR for the past two weeks. My brother and my mother are Tolkien heads to the highest degree. I�ve always liked him�I used to listen to a recording of The Hobbit on vinyl over and over again when I was little and I�ve read both that book and Fellowship as well as seeing the movies. But I wasn�t a fanatic or anything. I have finally been swept up in the mythos, however. It took me awhile, but at present I am thoroughly obsessed.

Matt and Liz and I came to a decision over brunch that Lord of the Rings is one of the few things we would place in the blank space of the following statement: If you don�t like/understand [BLANK], you are not worth being friends with.

LOTR is a lot of things, but most of all, it�s a wonderful guide concerning how to live your life in an authentic, ethical, and courageous manner. It�s about baring burdens with grace. It�s about how great works only happen through cooperation. It�s about the importance of honesty, loyalty, and steadfast friendship. It�s about the collective being more important than egocentric desire. It�s about being dauntless in the face of fear. And it�s about not giving up no matter what because no matter how bad thigns look, there is always hope.

It�s also about the dark side of humankind, both collectively and individually, and how easy it is to be seduced by power and complacency.

I love that with all these powerful entities�Gandolph and Galadreal and Saruman etc.�it�s these little hobbits that really make the difference. And that�s the way it is in real life. It�s not great governments or powerful leaders that change the world. It�s ordinary people. Any great struggle starts with a grassroots movement, and I think LOTR really pushes that notion. I think it�s especially important now in this age of irony and apathy, when people are way too content to work dumb jobs and make snarky remarks as a way to fill the vast empty space of their lives as the world crumbles around us.

LOTR is fundamentally about making choices and committing to them. Goethe said,

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now

I think that sums up Frodo et al pretty damn well. Don�t you?