Living a life worthy.
Wonderful sentiment, isn’t it, but how do we know? What does it even mean?
There is a great moment in The Return of the King involving the King of Rohan, Theoden. The King has chosen to come to the aid of his ally, Gondor. He arrives on the battlefield with 6000 cavalry troops to find the city besieged. In the book, the author, JRR Tolkien wrote that the hobbit, Merry, who had ridden with the men of Rohan thought, “They were too late! Too late was worse than never! Perhaps Theoden would quail, bow his old head, turn, slink away to hide in the hills.”
But, the King did not. Instead, he sprung into battle, calling his men to follow. Certainly he knew that several would die in battle, but he would ride “ever before them.” The attack of the host of Rohan helped turn the tide of battle that day but at a great cost. The leader of the enemy soon turned to attack Theoden personally. The attack was vicious and brief; soon Theoden was down. On the field of battle, the great old king fought his last fight.
Yet, even in death, he realized that he had lived well, he had lived a life worthy. Listen to his words:
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Powerful words, no? “I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed.” In the book, Theoden added “A grim morn, and a glad day, and a golden sunset.” He had indeed lived well at the end.
The power of this moment, however, only really comes into view by reflecting back on Theoden’s last year. The moment we meet Theoden (in the book The Two Towers), he is not the great warrior king, but a broken old man held captive under a spell. While the book of course deals in the mysterious and magical, and we can perhaps choose to think that Theoden’s woes when we meet him are beyond his choices, the reality is different.
Theoden had chosen to allow the evil counselor Wormtongue into his hall. Theoden had listened to bad advice that had slowly poisoned his mind. In those months, terrible things had been done in his name, things that had almost destroyed his kingdom. Worse, through his own actions (or inaction as it were), his own son had died while trying to save the kingdom, trying to save his father.
Thus, when Theoden utters his death words, he is acknowledging that previously, just months before, he could NOT have died with honor because he had not lived with honor. Instead, he would go with shame. His actions were not ones of valor, of honor, of integrity…they were the actions of a weak person giving in to doubt, to lies, to dishonor.
The previous 25+ years, I have spoken to thousands of students and young adults, urging them to choose a life that matters, to live a life of valor. Often students will ask me what that means; in my recent book Success for Life I wrote that a successful life, a life lived worthy, is one dependent on your choices: “between greatness and cutting corners, between valor and what is easy.”
Theoden had chosen to cut corners, to do what was easy. He had chosen to cut corners, to turn away from the hard thing that he knew to be right.
Yet, he turned his life around, coming out of his stupor to rise up in his last days. He reclaimed his honor by coming to the aid of his ally. Though confronted with a vast army of enemies, opposition determined to ruin his effort, Theoden chose greatness and valor, chose to do the hard thing.
That is a life lived worthy, one that at the end, you can take your last breath knowing that as you meet your ancestors, you “shall not now feel ashamed.”