All We Have To Decide

When I was in New Zealand, I treated myself to a black t-shirt from the Weta Workshop in Wellington. It has an image of Gandalf on the front, with the following words printed around him: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

Gandalf says these words to Frodo, who is bemoaning the fact that the Ring has come to him, and darkness is gathering. "I wish it need not have happened in my time." In the book, this happens very early on, in the crucial second chapter of Fellowship of the Ring, 'The Shadow of the Past'. 

I wonder whether it was hearing these words from his old friend and mentor which gave Frodo the courage to set off on the quest to destroy the Ring. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." From somewhere deep inside him, Frodo finds the courage to begin, although at first he does not realise that he will end up taking the Ring all the way to the Cracks of Doom in Mordor.

As in fantasy fiction, so in real life. As in Middle-earth, "our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong." All across the world, there are wars, violence, hunger, and poverty. In our society, homophobia, sexism, racism, insidious privilege, and other aspects of intolerance and hatred are growing like rank weeds. Our planet is being despoiled and many species (both flora and fauna) are facing extinction. 

So, "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." It sounds so simple, but it is absolutely not. No one person can cure the ills of the world. But each one of us can choose to Stand on the Side of Love, as the Unitarian Universalists say, and speak and act against the evils we see and experience. We may not be able to make a huge difference - we are not all Greta Thunbergs or Martin Luther King Jrs,  - but every little helps.