Tolkien Quotes: Kindness

It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. 

This observation comes from Sam’s perspective. Frodo has just threatened Gollum, not out of cruelty, but out of plain hard fairness, and showed that he recognizes the danger that Gollum presents. Sam is surprised, and this passage shows why.

This quote made me think of a story I heard a few days ago from my friend Renee. She said that when she and her older sister Anna were kids, Anna owned a cat-themed tea set which inspired a deep envy. One day as they had a tea party with their stuffed animals, Renee stared her sister in the eyes, picked up one of the plates, and smashed it against the wall. Tears and trauma ensued, and Renee was forced to apologize and use her allowance money to buy a new plate. A few weeks later, Anna invited her sister to another tea party. Renee and her stuffed animals attended— and she deliberately shattered another plate. And so it went. Anna hosted an event, Renee destroyed a piece of the set, and Anna still invited her the next time. 

Once she got past the plate-smashing stage, Renee said she thought that Anna had been naïve. “Later, though,” she said, “I realized that she had just kept on forgiving me.”

The cynic might argue, “This story illustrates that kindness is blind. She let her sister hurt her over and over for no reason!” But this story struck me as a beautiful example of a girl who decided that a friendship with her sister was more important than a matching tea set. She believed that the cost was worth the kindness.

Although everyone spends a lot of time trying to teach kids to be “nice,” kindness is often a rather ignored virtue. Most think, as Sam thinks, that realism and ruthlessness go hand in hand. In the passage from Lord of the Rings, Tolkien shows that kindness can be firm and fair, not naïve. However, kindness often means going into a difficult situation with eyes clear, leaving yourself open for a shot but willing to take it.

Anna got married a few years back, and for her wedding gift, Renee bought her a shiny new tea set. “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.”

~Lisa Shafter