This year, as I watched them, I kept thinking, I’ve got to do a blog about all the great and pithy sayings from the characters. Such as, inside the Mines of Moria when Gandalf can’t quite remember which way to go, and Frodo laments he wishes the ring would never have come to him, that none of it had ever happened. Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Or consider Sam’s speech to Frodo, who is about to throw in the towel, and Sam agrees that by all rights, they shouldn’t be the ones in this situation. However, Sam goes on. He likens what is happening with them to a fable, a great story, where it’s the darkest ever, and the heroes, despite the odds, keep going because they are holding on to something. And Frodo asks, “what are we holding on to?” And Sam answers, “that there is some good in this world, … and it’s worth fighting for.”

And the last excerpt, my favorite, is Gandalf’s drawing of a very clear boundary for the Balrog by standing on a bridge and shouting in a guttural tone of pure wizardry, “You … shall not … pass!” And bringing down the full weight of his staff which breaks off the bridge just as the Balrog is stepping on to it and causes the monster to drop into what looks like an endless chasm.

What ties all of these together for me? That no matter what is happening, we all have agency in our lives. We can lament living in such precarious times, we can want to give up, we can express our preferences, but such empty action does not change what is happening. People act inelegantly, the weather turns, the economy crashes, the marriage ends. The most important question is, what do we do at that point?

This for me, is best answered by Gandalf’s response when the Balrog’s whip catches his foot and drags him into the chasm right along with the creature. The scene ends there, leaving us movie-goers to think all is lost … that Gandalf dies. However, in the next movie, Frodo dreams that Gandalf doesn’t just fall, he instead turns head first into the chasm, grabs his falling sword and basically dives after the Balrog. Later in the movie, Gandalf (now the White Wizard) explains how he pursued, fought and smote his enemy on the tallest mountain of the lowest dungeon. He did not succumb to circumstances, he instead chose to finish the battle the Balrog began.

Why? Well, yes, that’s how it was written. But if I project my own interpretation on it, by not giving up, Gandalf found a level of competency, determination, and an absolute resolve to go through what was difficult, disheartening, and yes, frightening. For it is by doing such bold action we prove to ourselves … we can. People may tell us we are capable, however, that can be easily dismissed. We don’t believe them … mostly because we don’t believe in ourselves. But when we go through the fire, and come out the other side, perhaps singed, a bit bloody, and visibly shaken, we have touched, and acted from, our true nature, our true heart, the one that can never be broken. It is such steadfastness that lies at our core when we put down the phones, social media, TV and current culture that instead wants us to doubt and second guess ourselves, and blindly rely on the addiction to external forces to tell us what to do in order to keep us safe. (Which is usually, to buy something, listen to a podcast, or watch a new TV series, anything other than constructive action.) The trial by fire is what transformed Gandalf the Grey into the White Wizard, a far more competent and wise being. This is why, I believe, the Buddha’s dying words were to work on our own salvation diligently. No one can save us unless we want, and take action, to be saved.

How can we embrace Gandalf’s attitude with the Balrog? How can we keep to our New Year’s resolutions or intentions? We can take at least one step, as small as it may be, of mindful action that proves to ourselves we are capable. And if such action helps others, great. We can also find a fellowship, a group of people who can help us take that step. At another point in LOTR, Sam muses if someday there will be a song about Frodo and the ring. As he talks about it, Frodo reminds him he would not have gotten very far without Sam by his side. In Buddhism, this is interdependence, or the idea that nothing exists in a vacuum. We are constantly affected by other people, and affect other people as well, endlessly. It is not so much that one person can change the world … it is that one person supported by several others with the same vision can make a great impact. Looked at from a rather dispiriting side, Hitler couldn’t have done what he did on his own. It took a lot of people supporting him, who had a similar vision, to do what he did. He wasn’t alone.

Which brings us back to something Gandalf says to Frodo in the Mines of Moria right after his pep talk on agency, and I paraphrase, “there are other forces working in the world besides evil … Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and therefore … you (Frodo) were also meant to have the ring. … And that is an encouraging thought.” When we consider that where we are right now is exactly where we are meant to be, it can give us a sense of strength and courage to continue. We’ve made it this far. The Buddha, surrounded by sangha, could not do what he did alone. He said that sangha wasn’t half the spiritual path, it was the whole of it. While we may not be able to solve the ills of the world, we can at least make a constructive difference in our own lives, and that will undoubtedly affect those around us.

And while this last quote comes from The Hobbit series, I offer it as a reminder, something to give courage and strength to whatever you are facing:

“It’s the small things, simple acts of kindness and love,

that keep the darkness at bay.”

Everyone is on a hero’s journey, not to save the world … rather, to defy the darkness in our own lives … to act simply, with kindness and love. Which in turn … might just save the world.

About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.

The clients in my office who change, really change, always embrace one practice: being honest about what happened, and honest about what needs to be different going forward.  In fact, the most powerful explanations for things going awry I hear begin with the words, “I chose.”  “I chose to have unprotected sex and that’s how I got pregnant,” or “I chose to bottle up my feelings and not say anything and now I find myself so resentful I’m on the brink of divorce.”  Granted, it can take a long time for people to get to the place where they see how their choices led to their outcomes.  And, it can take a lot of humility for them to own those choices.  When, and if they do, the changes that follow are profound.  Owning our choices provides a way forward.  In one admission of what we did last time we can also know what we don’t want to do next time.  

The power of seeing our actions as a choice isn’t just in closing the feedback loop, though.  Sometimes making a choice frees up bandwidth for living with the choice.  Finding yourself on the fence about something important?  We don’t tend to realize just how much energy it takes to stay perched on that precipice.  The choice you need to make might be more clear than you’d like to admit, it’s what follows that you’re avoiding.  But owning our outcomes is both empowering for future choice opportunities and for making forward progress.  Perhaps you need to do something you really don’t want to do.  You can spend energy holding yourself in limbo, or that same energy doing damage control and helping yourself cope with hard realities.  At least the latter is moving your life forward.  Your destiny belongs to you.  Choose it. It will set you free.

So back to you, and your New Year’s Resolutions.  Do you really need a goal, or do you need to be honest about what’s happening now?  Do you feel crappy because you’ve eaten every cookie offered and skipped the gym for a month straight?  Perhaps you don’t need to resolve to work out, perhaps you just need to own your choices and their consequences.  “I chose to treat my body like a dumpster for the month of December, that’s why I feel bad.”  I hope you’re smiling when you say this because this exercise isn’t about judgment, it’s about getting in touch with reality.  Yes, yes I did live a large life at the holidays.  Was it worth it once a year? Probably.  Do I need to resolve to be better?  Maybe not.  I already know this isn’t sustainable.  My body doesn’t need a big change, it just needs me to go back to normal.  Continuing to choose this will continue to yield similar results.  When the feedback loop is closed, the problem self-corrects.      

Most of the things we want don’t actually need will power- they need intention.  Do you intend to spend your monthly contribution to your Trip to Greece Fund at the bar?  When we wake up on the first Sunday of January with a headache and less money for Greece we can skip the shame of “failing” at our goal.  Instead we could start with the phrase, “I chose to spend Greece money going out last night.”  That sobering sentence just might snap us into redirecting our fun budget for the following week back toward Greece.  

More importantly though, every moment we feel like our life is off track, like a victim, or even just that Murphy’s Law is always two steps behind us, we come back to ourselves with the words “I chose.”  In those two words is all of our agency.  With those two words about our past we write our future.  May the coming year be everything you set out for it to be.

About the Author: Laura Zwisler is a Licensed Professional Counselor and the owner of Lafayette Couples Counseling.  She specializes in relational therapy and men’s work.  Her practice reflects a deep belief that through corrective relational experiences we can heal traumas, get needs met, and fulfill our greatest potential.  In addition to counseling, Laura supervises interns at People House, leads workshops and trainings, and writes about the human experience.  If you are interested in working with Laura, please visit: https://www.lafayettecouplescounseling.com/ or email her at: laura@lafayttecouplescounseling.com.   

In one sense fate is something that happens to us, or rather, this is how we experience it. It is the bad luck, the road blocks, the limitations and the roller coaster of life. Fate is the pattern that drives your life, originating from your wounding in childhood. Fate gets named when you find yourself time and time again in the same experience, no matter how different the city, person or circumstances may be. Often we are bewildered by and victim to these recurring events and conditions. This repetitive pattern makes us feel trapped by our fate, and we quietly surrender to it as all-that’s-possible, abandoning our will and our hearts in the process.

Simply put fate is our unconscious beliefs played out by characteristics behaviors that we experience as the only way to be and survive in the world. A hidden agenda fulfilled by our assumption that we are separate and broken and require certain conditions to be viable. An invisible road map we follow unwittingly, fulfilling what we made up to be true about ourselves, others and the world in those formative years.

Destiny is an entirely different beast. Destiny, though often formatted to fit different belief systems, is your soul’s inherent tension to create what it loves and why it chose to be embodied. If you’ve lived long enough and have paid any amount of attention, you’ll have noticed that there are things that you’d really love to create or experience but, due to our conditioning, we give these dreams very little runway, either reformat them to something more practical or acceptable to ‘others’, deem them unrealistic, put them off until it’s a better time; the list goes on.

Destiny is an expression of our inherent power and connection to source energy. As science has proven now, energy cannot be created or destroyed. The energy that animates your form (and makes up your body and the world we live in) is the same energy that created the universe. Your soul is a universally unique expression of the creative energy that makes up everything, and it’s come to have an embodied experience on earth for a reason. Living your destiny is simple yet profound. It’s being the soul version of you. It’s expressing the inherent freedom you have and what brings you actual fulfillment and satisfaction in your life. Your destiny is the things that you love, for their own sake. The creation and experience of them brings you joy in the moments you are being them, and that energy cascades through your whole life.

We often only have a connection to the whispers of our hearts, our destiny. It gets so buried beneath our survival that it can take quite an excavation to remember who we are and what we love. Embodying your soul creates your destiny and heals you along the way. There are actually no barriers to you creating your destiny other than remembering and connecting to your inherent wholeness and listening to the language of your soul – your intuition, and following it.

Both your fate and your destiny reside within you. It’s your choice which one you create in your life. When you gain awareness of how you limit yourself, you gain the ability to choose something different. When you remember who you are in your heart, you create the opportunity to create your destiny and live a fulfilled, joyful, connected life. Both of these aspects of your humanness are created by you and are your choice. Which will you choose?

About the Author: Phannie has a long career of being a movement artist, movement and embodiment educator and creator. During her career as a professional dancer, studio owner, and company founder, she spent her time uncovering what is true and real in this world. Originally used as tools to create content for performances with strong messaging about the human experience, she created the embodiment teachings and methodology of the Radical Love Movement. 

Phannie has dedicated her life to authentic expression and understanding how consciousness works. She now has alchemical structure to support others in discovery and application of their authentic selves expressed through the body.

Many of the choices I have personally made, and then felt imprisoned by, have been imposed on me directly or indirectly by outside influences, as though my living space was built by someone else, based on their needs, values, and preferences instead of mine. Clients don’t often say it quite this way, and instead say they feel anxious or depressed or stuck. As we explore these feelings, we discover ways in which they are trying to conform to a set of internal rules, like bricks, that were laid and cemented by others. 

Brick by choice-limiting brick

Over time, brick by brick and layer by layer, we incorporate messages and expectations from influential and important people including parents and caregivers, relatives and friends, teachers and mentors. We are educated and shaped by more ambiguous others in society in the way laws and policies are created and enforced, by media and advertising, as well as through our experiences of ourselves in our broader environment. We learn we are acceptable if: If we go along, if we play nice, for example. As young, developing children, we take these messages in because humans are social beings wired biologically to survive and find protection in belonging. Without questioning them, we take these rules for granted and assume no structure could stand without them. Consider the common directive to “Always be kind”. Always, in every possible scenario? What does it mean to be kind? What actions demonstrate kindness and who do they serve? Certainly I’m not suggesting cruelty as the alternative because that represents an either-or thinking error and there are more than two choices when thinking flexibly. When a useful guideline becomes a rigid requirement, it locks out possibilities — like living in a small box with no room to move. 

Finding freedom

If you can relate to the feeling of being locked in a box, in choices that no longer serve you, working with a counselor can help you start developing an exit strategy. Together you might identify the nature of your particular box, how it was constructed over time, who laid which bricks, and how you are maintaining it on purpose or by accident. This may not be fast work. Much as we might wish for “7 Easy Ways to Freedom!”, opting out of rules you didn’t create requires the hard work of looking closely and staying curious and open to what you find. As you proceed, you may decide you want to update your space — maybe there are only a few bricks to be replaced, or perhaps you envision a larger scale renovation. Counseling works in different ways for different people because our needs and stories are different, but if your life feels like it’s “too tight”, working with a counselor can help you find more flexibility in your thoughts and behaviors. 

I want to clarify that I’m not suggesting we abandon each other and refuse to be influenced by anyone else. I’m actually not suggesting there’s a right way at all, simply that counseling is one place to tell the truth about the way things are for you, how they got that way over time, and what change might be desirable or possible. As my friend said, sometimes we choose to conform and compromise because we are a social species and we value attending to collective interests as well as individual ones. If this feels like a struggle for you, counseling can also help clarify values around self and others that sometimes feel in conflict. 

Counseling may not be for everyone, and that’s okay. Just like choosing other personal or professional relationships, not every therapist is a good match for every client. If you decide to take a chance on counseling and don’t feel a “good fit” with the counselor, know that in the case of self-referred counseling, you are in the driver’s seat and are empowered to choose who you want to work with, on which areas, and that you can start or stop at any time.

About Lauren Black
I’ll never forget my high school math teacher who said, “choices have consequences; make good choices.” Easier said than done! If you’re finding yourself making choices that are moving you further from your goals, you are not alone. Therapy can help you uncover the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that might be holding you back and discover your motivations for change. My own experiences in therapy led me to change careers; I earned my Master’s Degree in Counseling and have worked with people rebuilding their lives after consequences related to substance abuse and criminal charges. All issues and identities welcomed.

Contact Lauren at 307-509-0642 or LaurenBlack@peoplehouse.org.