After graduating from university over 3 years ago, I started this adventure of teaching and living in Japan. From the start, I knew that it was temporary by nature of the job and that there were other things I still want to try in my life. As I am preparing to try something new this year, I am still figuring out what I will actually do next. What is the direction I will take next? Where exactly will I end up by the end of the year? To figure out the next step, over these past few years in Japan, I kept asking myself, “What am I going to do with my life?” and “What will my purpose be?” I have a number of things I like doing and I can imagine doing down the road, but what is something that has meaning and purpose behind it? Last spring, I felt as if I was getting closer to figuring it out, but I was still confused. The pieces had not fallen into place.

I was starting with the wrong question.

A better question to consider first is “what needs to be done?”

Two sources of inspiration for this question came from reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo last summer. Both of these great stories have been on my mind in the months since I read them, and it was only until last month that one of the lessons I pulled from them really hit home and the question I needed came to me.

Tolkien’s works have long been some of my favorite books. The first time I read them ten years ago, I remember finding messages that were important to me and gave me motivation for that time. This second reading gave me many new insights that are relevant to my life now. I will share one that relates to this post’s topic.

Near the start of Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, the wizard Gandalf has come to tell Frodo that the ring the hobbit carries is indeed the One Ring of power and that the rumors of the Dark Lord Sauron gathering power again are true. Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time” (55). Then Gandalf delivers some of the most powerful words in the trilogy that even made it into the movies made in the early 2000s. He says, “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 us.” (55-56). In the end, Frodo accepts what needs to be done, to destroy the ring, and he plays one of the most important roles in the story.

Dumas gives a similar message of accepting one’s circumstances and doing something worthwhile with one’s time. After his character, Edmond Dantes, has been wrongfully imprisoned in a dungeon for a few years, swinging back and forth from hope to despair and at times losing the will to live, he meets L’Abbe Faria, who digs a tunnel from his own cell into Dantes’. This Italian man has been imprisoned four years longer than Dantes, and in that time he made the tools needed to dig out of his own cell as well as write his “thoughts and reflections of my whole life” (175). Dantes, understandably, is quite surprised that this man seems to have found so much purpose in living despite the situation.

The poignant message comes when Dantes expresses his surprise at Faria’s productivity and says “if you thus surpass all mankind while but a prisoner, what would you not have accomplished free?” Faria responds, “Possibly nothing at all; — the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; it needs trouble and difficulty and danger to hollow out various mysterious and hidden mines of human intelligence” (183-184). His words makes one look at challenging circumstances differently. Dantes takes what the man says to heart and starts learning from him. Once he escapes the prison, Dantes is set to make up for his lost time and do something with his life. Challenging circumstances cannot stand in the way of fulfilling some purpose if one can find ways to make better use of any situation.

After considering these ideas and the circumstances in my own life, some pieces came together last month when I started orienting my thoughts from “what can I do?” to “what needs to be done?” In the first question, I was focusing on what I want to do, what I can imagine myself doing in the future, and how I can improve something in my life. These are great ideas to consider, but I was missing out on the first step of seeing the bigger picture. I was stuck.

What needs to be done?

When I started focusing on this question, I started seeing my life and circumstances differently. Yes, you can find a lot of issues that need fixing once you start looking for them, but once you have a better idea what is needed in your sphere of influence, then you can ask the question of what you can do to help. It has certainly brought a lot more clarity to my plans for the future. It has also given me purpose to know that what I do with my time is not just to improve my own life, but I can hopefully find ways to fulfill some need around me at the same time. The source of true motivation does not come from only fulfilling one’s own desires, but through fulfilling a need in the world.

The phrase that ends The Count of Monte Cristo seems simple at first, but taken in context with the other events that happen throughout this long work, it gained a deeper meaning for me. Dantes leaves a letter to his young friend Maximilian Morrel that ends with the words “wait and hope” (1462). We can only guess what will happen in the future. To wait does not mean to be idle, but rather make the most of our individual and collective situations and continue to hope and trust that we will find a way through the challenges. As Gandalf says, “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again” (55). You cannot avoid the dark times in life, but even though they will come, they will also pass away again. And that is hope.

Recommended Books:

Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo. The Modern Library. New York. 2002.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Ballantine Books. New York. 1965.