Who would you be?

Who would you want to be if the Lord of the Rings was actually true, and you were in it?

I have been exploring this question for several years now, and my initial answer was... well... I guess I'd have to be me, because I couldn't possibly be anyone else. And on the face of it, this sounds like a pretty good answer.

But what happened was, I got caught up in doubt and fear. Doubt that I could actually be MORE than what I am, and fear that I might actually be LESS than what I wanted to be. And I spent a year flailing around trying to create a new me without actually expanding myself in anyway, which was kind of like wanting everything to be better while at the same time not wanting anything to change.

Then, I watched the Lord of the Rings with Daniel. What a difference it made to explore the movie with such a good friend. He right away thought I could be Aragorn. I was like... yeah... right... rolling my eyes and thinking... how impossible that would be. But by the time we finished the 13 hour marathon of movie watching (yes, we watched the whole trilogy in one day), I had decided that maybe I'd give it a try.

Daniel had this thought that he wanted to be Gandalf, and so he right away started working to learn magick. I, on the other hand, got stuck in the mire of "how could I possibly be Aragorn in real life, what does that really mean, who are the hobbits, where the heck is Arwyn, and what is the quest?" I obsessed over how I was "not" being Aragorn for the better part of the year, with small forays into wanting to be a dragon, wishing I was Tony Jaa, and other small insanities.

Nevertheless, I did make progress, and so did Daniel. We did lots of things we might not have done had it not been for our decisions to live larger. Most of the things that he did centered around learning magick. And most of the things I did centered around... well... learning magick. And we did have adventures, and cool magickal things happened for the both of us. I think I would have had a more successful year if I had wanted to "be" Gandalf.

The following year we did it again. And I spent another year, dancing all around the idea of being Aragorn without really actually succeeding. It occured to me that maybe I should make a different choice this year, but... no...  once again, I have this compelling urge to be Aragorn, to be an "Aragorn type" person. And I think it's not so much that I want to BE him, it's more that in my heart I AM him. Does that sound crazy?

I was thinking the other day, about what if I went to a therapist, and we had this talk about who I want to be in the world, and I talked about wanting to be Aragorn. I imagined the therapist would ask me why I didn't just want to be Shirley. And my answer was, "I am Shirley. And Shirley wants to be Aragorn, and I want Shirley to be who she wants to be. So, can you help me or not?"

So what about you? Who would you want to be? In your best case scenario, in your favorite movie of all time, in the grand epic fantasy of life on earth, if you had a choice, who would you want to be?

I found these two great videos on YouTube... Between the two of them, the music, the lyrics, and the character, it's who I would be... who I will be... just as soon as I figure out how.

Wow!