The changing of the world

Aragorn

It is a strange thing to live in a world which is full of familiar things, and yet is not the world you were born into, you and a thousand generations of your kindred before you.

So much has been gained, by myself most of all. Yet we have paid for those gains by bitter and irrecoverable loss. For how many thousand years has the dwindling race of Númenor lived in and from a past which to many of them seemed more real, more important, than the present? How often, sighing for what we had lost, did we cast away the good things that were offered to us, thinking that because they were new, they had no worth?

Not long ago, when staying a guest in the Steward’s house – my one place of refuge from the cares and complications of kingship – I unwillingly overheard the protesting voice of Túrin, his second son, perhaps the only person (myself and his wife excepted) who dares to argue openly with Faramir, and one, moreover, who seldom troubles to lower his voice: ‘Why do you always look backwards and never forwards? You, uncle Eomer, cousin Elphir, everybody, and especially the King [thank you kindly, Master Túrin, I thought] – why do you all believe that whatever is old, is good? I say we can do better than the men of old. I say their ways need not be our ways. I say…’

Faramir cut him off at that point; I couldn’t hear what he said, but judging from Túrin’s answer, it was to the effect that we had to look to the past to learn wisdom.

‘Learn wisdom? Learn what follies to avoid, perhaps. The world is changing, I’ve often heard you say so. If we don’t change with it, we’ll be left behind. I don’t want to be left behind, even if you do. I say…’

‘If you would say a little less and listen a little more,’ his father interrupted again, his voice raised in rare irritation, ‘you might say more that is worth hearing, and anger people less when you say it. Now shall we continue where we left off?’ And the boy’s surly voice recommenced reading in the high-elven speech, stumbling often and tense with anger at its own errors.

I walked away, but the further I walked, the louder that harsh protesting voice sounded in my ears: why do you all believe that whatever is old, is good?

Much that is old, is good. You only have to look at the stonework in Minas Anor, or at the workmanship of Orthanc, or, far more, at the humble dwellings that have been built amidst the ruins of the old cities of the North, to realise that we have fallen away from the skills of our forefathers. Even the Elves, long-lived as they are, place the perfection of works in the far past, even as far back as Fëanor who perished, they say, before the sun was made. But for Elves it is different: the past is not lost to them, it walks beside them hour by hour, and there is still one in Middle Earth for whom the Elder Days are a present memory. It cannot be so with men: even the longest-lived among us – even I – are born to fleeting days, and change is the law that governs our life.

I have sought to slow – to halt? to reverse? – that change inasmuch as I have striven to restore the glory of the Two Kingdoms. But in seeking to slow it in my heirs, by marrying my son to one of our purer northern race, have I imprisoned him, debarring him from what the law of Men has decreed he must become? It will do us little good if we perish in our purity, even as the old line of Gondor did before the Stewards, with their eyes set on vigour and strength rather than purity of blood, stepped into the breach. And while their policies may have changed the race of Gondor and shortened men’s lives, it is thanks to them that Gondor has survived at all, with its memories of greater things.

I found myself at the top of the steps leading into Faramir’s beloved orchard, where he walks each evening with Firiel. Truly length of time is of little importance in the brief affairs of men! . From hearing Túrin’s protests to reaching the steps, my whole view of the matter had changed – or perhaps the change had happened already and had only crystallised in my mind. However that may be, I spoke with Faramir that very evening, and when I returned to the City next day I sent a messenger to Arnor telling Eldarion that for my part, I would no longer oppose his courtship.