The Aragorn Complex

For a long time, I have felt as if I'm peering in through windows which I can't open. I look in on friendships where there's enough trust to show tears and enough closeness to hug away pain. When I went to dinner with my coworker at Buffalo Wild Wings recently, I felt as if I was at another of these windows. My coworkers were laughing and sharing their inside jokes about movies I've never seen and suspect I would never understand. On the train to work, there are strangers who strike up conversations with other strangers, pocketing their ear-buds and making conversational music instead. All of these are windows and though I am used to peering, to wishing, something has changed. Now I am asking myself whether its' actually a case of my not being able to open the window, but rather my not wanting to? After all, how often do I reach for the latch? 

Underneath all of my debilitating intimidation, my overwhelming sense of awkwardness, my constant and incessant striving for control of my environment, lives a desperate desire to conform, to be like others, to be comfortable in my own skin and stop striving to perfect its daily performance. Yet, despite my looking in on these many windows starring people I cannot be or be with, I continue to find myself unchanged. How can it be that I wish so intensely to be different, but I make no efforts to achieve it? Why, instead of reaching for the windows latch, do I eternally choose to remain out in the cold?

Through much contemplation, I believe I have discovered the explanation. I shall use the Lord of the Rings as the means to clarify it.

Imagine, if you will, the Hobbits walking into that tavern where they first meet Aragorn. The four short hairy footed men sit down at a table and start slurping down their grog. They're laughing, telling Shire tales, kicking each other under the table at inappropriate jokes, toasting old victories and squeezing a shoulder to temper age-old pains. They're on the verge of an epic quest, but if you were to look at them, they'd seem nothing more than a group of friends out for a second breakfast.

Now look in the corner and see the man in the cloak. He isn't speaking, isn't moving, keeps his face, and therefore his story, in the shadows. Aragorn looks in on the laughter of the room, the toasting of drinks and the jokes with alcoholic undertows. In the days to come, he'll be part of the Hobbits quest, part of their circle, but he'll still keep his distance. Sure, sometimes he'll stand at the head and lead the way through pain and loss, sometimes theirs and sometimes his, but he'll still keep himself apart. As it was on that first day in that crowded and noisy tavern, Aragorn will always keep part of himself separate. It could even be argued, in fact, that he keeps most of himself buried.

If comparing Aragon to the Hobbits, one must ask; who is happier? Who leads the happier life? It must be the Hobbits of course. Look at their friendship, their willingness to befriend and to trust. They wear their flaws on their sleeves, strip off their shirts to reveal their scars, admit their failures to each other because they know there's no possibility of rejection. Their lives are easier, better, happier than Aragorn's….and here's my point.

Between the Hobbits and Aragorn, who do you find more interesting? Who do you want to know more about? Hell, whose cooler?

I hate to admit it, but there's a part of me that thinks I'm cooler this way. Its' a part that lives down deep, hiding behind my logic where it thinks I'll forget about it and therefore let it live, let it thrive, but I know its' there. It, my Aragorn, thinks its' cooler for being distant, for staying the watcher and not the speaker, for keeping the cloak drawn low over my eyes. I'm more of an interesting character when my story is kept in the shadow. If the price of playing the mysterious, elegant and secretly scarred role is missing out on some laughter, some toasting of mugs, that's got to be reasonable right?

No. It's not and I know that. Its' an unfair trade, but the Aragorn part of me thinks it is and that keeps me from making changes. I keep thinking about Spock and the peacefulness there must be in a Vulcan's logic. I want to be THAT just as much as I know that THAT is wrong. I can't be a whole person and keep my distance at the same time. I can't be happy if I'm always vying to control that happiness, to justify and measure it and then cancel it out if I judge it unfitting. How can I expect to find friends, some of my own Hobbits, when I can't approach a table without a planned excuse of departure already prepped? How can I expect to fall in love when the front I put up is never me, but a fabricated, "head before my heart" me? All my constant distancing, all my facades and my Aragorn cloaks, it has to stop. It has to stop.

I have to find a way to leave my shadowy corner and join those Hobbits at the table. More than just finding a way to burn my Aragorn cloaks, I must find a way to WANT to.

It isn't a case of opening the window.

It is a case of shattering it, climbing through, planting my feet and demanding to be there.