 Who is the ring bearer? It's not a great elf lord, not a great pneumatic, not a wise wizard, not even a heroic human being and they abound in the story. Certainly not a greedy earthbound dwarf, but it's a little fellow, a halfling, a hobbit. Yes that can rise to greatness. Little people who smoke pipes, who enjoy their comforts, they love their food, but when the chips are down, as it were, when the call comes, they are willing to forego anything for a task that is truly important. What have these funny little people with their furry feet got, that the other three kinds of beings don't have? What is it? Well, they are free for one thing, they are free of the obsessions and the preoccupations of most of the others. Their predilections and their interests are sort of natural. What comes to a person? Why not want to be a little bit comfortable? Why not want to eat a good meal? Why not want to have a nice clean hobbit hole? All of these things, but they just like it for what it is, because these things are present in themselves. They don't have all kinds of mental projections and preoccupations with them, their ego is not bound up with all of these things as it is with the others. They are free of the sickness of the mind that people have, and that is why they can be heroic. That's why the ring bearer is a hobbit rather than any other. And I think we need to keep that in mind because our minds play these tricks on us, that there is always some kind of egotistical projection, some kind of weirdness that gets into our heads and that then frustrates our ability to rise to the heroic exigencies of life. It's a simplicity which has to be gained. You can't say, oh the simple man, the simple woman, the simple natural person, that's the most wonderful. Well, what if you are not simple like that anymore? What are you going to do? You're going to hit yourself over the head with a hammer to destroy your brain or it's not going to work. So what you have to do is you have to kind of de-complicate your character. You have to get away from the malign convolutions and gyrations of the mind. And that's a lot more easily said than done. Look, just no matter how tired you are in the evening, you lie down to a well-deserved rest and the mind goes to work. What about this and what about that and how about this and how about that? And why didn't I do that and how could I do that? And it goes on and on and on and on and you can't stop it. It does this during the day, too. And then this is what makes you human. This weirdness, this silliness that goes on, your cat or your dog or your iguana, they don't have these problems. When they are tired, they sleep like a Zen Buddhist. When they are hungry, they eat. But you don't. When you are hungry, you look into the latest health fact. What can I eat, if anything? What can I drink, if anything? When you feel like saying something, you won't say it, because is it politically correct? What I'm going to say? Are all of these goons aren't going to punish me if I say this? Or for that matter, if I smoke a cigarette or a cigar or whatever the case may be. Hobbits were partial to pipes, primarily. They had their own wonderful tobacco that was referred to as pipe weed that they grew themselves. But again, it's that uncomplicated character which is not held in troll really by the illusions of the mind. And I think only a Hobbit could have written this poem, which is written by the old Hobbit Bilbo, who is already in a sort of retirement in Elrond's house. And look at the wonderful attitude that is present here. I sit beside the fire and sink of all that I have seen, of meadow flowers and butterflies and summers that have been, of yellow leaves and gossamer in atoms that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and sink of how the world will be, when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen. In every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and sink of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and sink of times that were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door. With the nostalgia there is still always an immediate practicality of the good that is present at that particular time.