Lois Lane, the Shire, and the Importance of a Destination

Have you ever heard this before? Life is about the journey, not the destination. When I hear this quote, I think it’s wrong. Being a diligent student has taught me to check my sources though, so I used the all-powerful Google to figure out what it meant. It turns out that the person who said it first was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he said “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

What’s the chief difference between this misquote and what Emerson said? Emerson is saying something about what life is, the misquote is saying something about what life ought to be like. If Emerson is wrong, it is because he’s made a poor observation about life. If the misquote is wrong, it is because it values the wrong things about life.

Here’s my opinion: Life is a journey, but it is about the destination. Thinking that life is about the journey is like saying “What isn’t important is where you end up, but how you get there.” I’d rather know how to get to Disneyland and have to crawl to get there than to learn how to fly and end up lost and in a Black Hole.  I’m not saying that the journey is not important, as owning an Ironman suit and flying to Disneyland would be one of the greatest experiences in my life (of course, owning an Ironman suit is, in someways, a destination for me), but it is nowhere near as important as ending up in the right place.

Knowing and following what is good is more important than how we follow it. To put it another way, the main reason why we should be concerned with how we're following what is good is by figuring out if what we are doing will actually get us there. 

Here’s an example from something that is very important and near to my heart: Clark and Lois. If any of you know what is happening in the DC universe, you know that last year the powers-that-be decided to “reset” all the running storylines and start from square one in an event called The New 52. So, Clark Kent (better known as Superman) and Lois Lane never were. But don’t worry, every superhero needs to struggle with love at some point in his (or her) career, and that doesn’t stop being true in The New 52. Superman does find love….with Wonder Woman.

Truth be told, I know very little about Wonder Woman and I am certainly not an expert on Superman, but I grew up on the cartoons, read a good deal of his comics, and watched all 10 seasons of “Smallville”. Sure, some of the comics reference a possibility of Wonder Woman and Superman being a good match for each other, but it was always understood that Lois and Clark are soul mates (and this is coming from someone who does not believe in soul mates). In fact, Wonder Woman’s beauty and strength was one of the quiet, nagging fears that Lois always had.

Another very strong comic relationship was between the lesser-known hero Elongated-man and his wife (Ralph and Sue Dibny). In Identity Crisis, when questioned about if Ralph ever thought that Wonder Woman, the standard of femininity if the DC universe, was more captivating than his wife, he said “Diana’s  beautiful – but to me, she’s second best. I love Sue. Don’t you understand? It’s not just that [Sue] believes in me. She’s my lady.” It’s not a matter of who is the best and most beautiful being paired up with each other; it’s about who is right being paired with each other.

Because like any hero, Superman’s greatest weakness was never Kryptonite and his greatest strength was never being stronger than a locomotive.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would pair Superman with Wonder Woman other than to just boost sales. One of Superman’s biggest struggles is relating to humanity; making the “Super” more important than the “Man.” Wonder Woman has the same struggle. It makes about as much sense to put two alcoholics together and then telling them to fight crime. Lois Lane always kept Clark grounded in his humanity; she kept him focused on the importance of submitting to justice instead of determining what justice is. She kept him a man, while Wonder Woman pushes him to become a god. 

But at least Wonder Woman is a better match for Superman in terms of a….physical relationship. Congratulations. We lowered Superman’s ability to stand for Truth, Justice, and the American way so we could explain his sex life (which, evidently, is a huge problem to a lot of people) and boost sales. 
  

It makes me sad that they changed Superman’s romance and put aside all the good that his relationship with Lois brought. But that’s the thing about loving the journey instead of the destination. If you love the journey, you care about things constantly changing instead of what the change will bring. You would rather the world be in flux than peaceful. You would rather have a man be complicated and making mistakes than for him to be good.

I recently read The Lord of the Rings and I became one of those annoying people who wants to point out the difference between the books and the movie. I just loved what J.R.R Tolkien was trying to convey in the books, and I felt really bad with how much the movies had to shorten the message for the audience. Truth be told, one of the things that stood out to me was how much of a badass Faramir was in the books compared to the movies. Faramir was a wise and confident student of Gandalf in the books, nothing like the sometimes conniving, always self-conscious person that he is in the movie. I like what another blog said about it: “Jackson’s revision of Faramir—changing him from a heroic and pure character to a conflicted, modernized man—represents something much deeper than an additional plot twist designed to generate additional suspense. A Faramir who has the purity of heart to not be tempted by the Ring—like J.R.R. Tolkien’s—is inconceivable for members of the Millennial Generation.” (http://www.civitate.org/2009/01/the-new-evangelical-scandal/)

The differences don’t stop there. In the book, Aragorn is not reluctant to take on his position as the king because of self-doubt; his sword is re-forged early in the quest in The Fellowship of the Ring out of necessity instead of finally being accepted before the final battle in The Return of the King. Aragorn never questions if he is the right person to lead the people; he accepts the role that is put on him (because what else could he have done? Let Middle Earth fall into chaos?). Instead, when he does question things, it is about the right ways to be a good king. Aragorn starts with confidence and learns to be a king, instead of starting with doubt and learning to be confident.

 

Tolkein also goes out of his way to show that the end of the war is not when the Ring is destroyed (as Jackson portrays it) but when the Shire is restored. Saruman takes over the Shire at the end of The Return of the King, and the war doesn’t end until Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo kick him out. That’s because, for Tolkein, the Shire is an important place in Middle Earth; it’s the only place that is capable of producing the kind of character that it takes to hold the burden of the Ring of Power. It is a basis of strength in Middle Earth; a simple and good place to live. To save Middle Earth means more than just ending the journey, it means restoring what was lost during the journey and producing a new kind of good. If the journey didn’t end in good, then what was the point?

“But that’s just not believable,” I’m quick to be told. “If you were to make people like Faramir and Aragorn perfect and not give them a struggle, people cannot relate to it. I want to see someone who struggles like me. Focusing on the Shire is boring because it does not have any kind of struggle; it’s just a happy place with the biggest conflict being munchkins fighting an old man.” Or “I like Batman more than Superman anyways, because he’s conflicted and I can relate to it. Superman is just too perfect, I don’t see how he has to struggle.” Or “What you’ll realize when you’re older is that the world is not black and white, but it is mostly shades of gray. There is no easy answer.”

Am I the only one who is sick of hearing that? I think you need to be a very special kind of stupid to think that life is not complex and has “shades of gray”. The problem is that we’ve begun to look at the gray and say that this is what is important. Being conflicted is what life is all about. We forget that if there is a gray, there is a white and a black. I’m tired of looking at what is gray and drab; I would much rather look at what is startlingly white. On top of it, having a clear picture of what is good does gives people the strength they need to deal with the drabness we find in life.

Here's a thought: Batman has always respected and admired Superman. Aragorn spent most of his life defending the Shire. 

I want my heroes to be heroic. I know life is complex, everyone does. I need to see how I’m supposed to live. It’s like what Sam thinks when he’s in Mordor: “the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

 

Can we please stop focusing on the world being conflicted and instead look at what is good? Can we stop arguing about how to do the journey? Instead, can we just figure out where to go and get on with it?

“Life is but a stopping place,

A pause in what's to be,

A resting place along the road,

to sweet eternity.

We all have different journeys,

Different paths along the way,

We all were meant to learn some things,

but never meant to stay...

Our destination is a place,

Far greater than we know.

For some the journey's quicker,

For some the journey's slow.

And when the journey finally ends,

We'll claim a great reward,

And find an everlasting peace,

Together with the lord” – Author Unknown