Bilbo Theorizes About Wellbeing

Eric Comerford overhears Bilbo and Gandalf discussing happiness.

- Eric Comerford

After all their adventures, having now sailed to the Undying Lands, Gandalf and Bilbo sit on Bilbo's front porch after dinner, partaking of tea and the occasional puff of pipe-weed.

Bilbo: I was happy, Gandalf - or so I thought - before, by your traps, devices, and designs, you lured me into the quest to claim the Lonely Mountain. I mean, I had everything a hobbit could have or desire, and by all estimates of those esteemed and respectable in our county - whether with a little wisdom or not - I was as good-fortuned and well-grounded as a hobbit could hope to be or ask for. And indeed, I asked for nothing more.

Gandalf: You needed a push, my dear friend, to become more than what you were, but which was always inside you.

Bilbo: Yes, we hobbits don't tend to think of ourselves as fitting for fables and legends. But our adventure was full of fearful things, gloomy things.... sad things. And did it make me happy? Well, I dare say there's something more important than 'happiness', which is happiness, though I know that's a strange way of putting it. What I mean is, you taught me that the comfortable hobbit life was not all there was. It was only when I left my home - nearly losing it altogether, along with all my possessions, to the blasted Sackville-Bagginses, I should add - and forgot myself, fled from myself, my home, my 'happiness' - let go of myself, and gave myself over to the company - that I began to be filled with something fresh. By emptying myself of my self and giving myself over to the quest, I was able to be filled with new things far more precious than what I had before, and which that life could not give me.

Gandalf: I suppose a pertinent question is, what was this higher calling, which was greater than happiness?