Why You Won’t Return Unchanged
Gandalf looked at him. “My Dear Bilbo!” he said. “Something is the matter with you! You are not the same hobbit that you were.”
Many of us have heard those words: “You’ve changed.” Maybe a teacher or employer admired your latest project and commended you for how your work has improved over the year. Or maybe these words came from your own mouth as you stood before your mirror noticing the lines on your skin from both suffering and smiling. And if you’ve read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, you recognize this observation that Gandalf the wizard makes, and you know the change that was imprinted on Bilbo by his “adventures.” The hobbit who ran out of his hobbit hole without a walking staff or handkerchiefs was not the same hobbit who returned to the Shire many months later.
This is the power of Tolkien’s story: Though Bilbo’s journey may be filled with much greater thorns and thistles than our own, and certainly much more frightening enemies than we could imagine in our own world, we can see our own experiences through his. This is, after all, why we read stories. Like him, we will endure suffering and be chiseled by it. We’re often changed in good ways, ways we have longed for. Yet those changes take time — and sometimes they take a long time.
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