Dear J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist, an inventor of language and history and myth. Among his many efforts, the following neologism:
Eucatastrophe – (n) – The sudden turning from bad to good; an unexpected shift from despair to hope; the arrival of remedy in the midst of ruin.
Of all the things I recall reading or knowing of Tolkien and his works, this small thing was hidden from me until tonight. Hidden in plain sight, of course, as it is a theme he weaves with great skill throughout all his works. I have known it even as the bald statement of it as such has never until now been recognized.
The word is his, the general meaning of it I have not yet found direct reference to, the definition I give it above is my own, created from an understanding of the root and the intent seen in having read his life’s work more times than I should likely admit.
I am often chided for my borderline obsession with Tolkien. People think me of that fannish sort that glorifies beyond good reason. Never has it been so. Rather, I think there is a powerful drought of hope in the world. I think the profound deficit of it has, in many ways, leeched a large measure of delight in life from the world.
Who, watching nightly news or reading the evening paper, could possibly deny it? So much of our world today is adrift upon an ever swirling ocean of horror, ugliness, and despair. We shriek comfort to ourselves in hysterics at the approach of night, and clutch one another or ourselves and block out the world to listen to the simplicity of the heartbeat there, under the covers… our own or, if we’re so blessed, another’s… until sleep arrives.
The sleight of mind that is true optimism does not often prevail. Distracted by daily duty and the chase for the illusion that is ‘security’ and ‘safety’ in this, an impermanent world; we do not often have time to find the awe and wonder that flourishes around us. When was the last time you actually stopped to smell the flowers, instead of saying you should, instead of telling someone else they should?
I honor the work Tolkien set into the world because it is among the great tellings of hope in our time. For many more reasons than this, but this is the quiet, most reverent one… that hope is a very simple thing that lives and breathes in all of us. It is like a heartbeat, indeed, within the heart is where it dwells…. perennial, eternal…. for all we constantly fear its fading.
I find it a conundrum, that in this impermanent world, hope is such an infinite thing. I find it almost funny how quick we are to mourn it as having passed when it takes but the lightest puff of possibility to send it burning skyward.
We are such silly things, we humans. I think for a moment of how many humans, in that moment of transient despair, leap to death or allow themselves any number of crimes against their humanity, against hope, against one another. Sadly, we are not always silly.
Meaning is where you find it, of course. Or perhaps merely where you care to look for it. Maybe it is the same. I think it must be so, because I find it in so many odd places.
I think and write in this moment about finding it in Tolkien’s words, works, and the many derivatives that have risen from it. But I see it in many places. Perhaps that is its truest beauty, or ours — that meaning can be found anywhere, that we are capable of lifting it at will from anything.
At will. There is a host of things that rush to my mind to write those two, little words. I resist.
In the course of my career, I have made a living at putting that willingness to find meaning to work. Humans are two things before all else — pattern recognition machines and process engineers. We look for patterns, we naturally find structures, we refine and apply routines, scripts if you will, to everything we do. Generally, we do it without thought.
I am not as certain that applying thought is as helpful as I once found it. This, said from within a mighty snarl of thoughts, yes, but I am chuckling for it even as I am chiding myself for having once more managed to roam a good bit from the intent I had when I began typing.
Too far afield, I shrug my shoulders and decide to enjoy the ramble rather than try to force it back to a lost point. I content myself by thinking those who would see it likely already have and the rest will be too busy chuckling at me to mind more than doing so. You see? In the end, still, meaning is where we find it.
There is a certain, arrogant part of me that wants to set my hands upon a name from Tolkien’s world and turn it to a telling of my own. Eldarion, the last scion, and the unknown daughters of the house of Elendil. I would, of course, be burned for a heretic, if not sued into oblivion by the rather irascible and grabby marketing machine that Tolkien Enterprises has become these days.
Still, it tempts me. The rich history and the convenience of the great question mark there, at the end of the genealogy is an author’s dream.
Well. Standing out in the middle of the field, so to speak, I’ll end here. Consider me very thoughtful indeed… would it be possible to render such a thing in a way that did not rely upon Tolkien’s work, but still retained the sense of it? Hmmmm.