When Merry Brandybuck and Peregrin Took encounter the Ent known as Treebeard they have some interesting conversations, where they learn the mentality of trees. Buried in these conversations is a sense of an old age of wisdom that J.R.R. Tolkien is seemingly revealing in sort of clandestine way. If this is his thoughts, or the thoughts of the community of scholars that he was surrounded by, I do not know. However, the wisdom, though subtle, is certainly worth reviewing.
One of my favorite quotes, is when Treebeard gets himself all worked up to take some action. Shortly thereafter he drops this little nugget of wisdom:
“We must not be hasty. I have become too hot. I must cool myself and think; for it is easier to shout stop! than to do it.”
How often in life do we find people so quick to yell stop, but not really offer a solution. People that are quick to say no to something but really have no alternative. Traffic cops if you will that are not offering an alternative. The answer lies in TreeBeard’s wisdom. We always are quick to say stop in a moment of passion, but rarely are we will willing to cool ourselves down, think it through and understand what action we would take as alternative.
Thinking something through is hard, doing something about it is even harder. Funny. I can recognize the people that like to yell stop but do nothing. However, hard to see the behavior in myself, although I know that I am guilty.
Anyway, here is to cooling ourselves down. Here is to thinking more. Here is to being less hasty and doing more and yelling stop less.
Guy Reams
