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When you’re a teen or in your twenties and you read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and you get into the elves being essentially immortal, and they’re kind of complaining about that, the response at that age… at least from me… was one of disbelief.
I mean, they get to hang around as long as the world lasts. Humans have to die, getting in their biblical three score and ten if they’re lucky… unless they were of the line of Numenor, in which case they might get 4-5 times that number. But even that long life is still nothing compared to the elves.
And, if you’re a turbo nerd and you get into The Silmarillion, it is just full of complaints about the burden of the elves and their unending lives. The freaking burden of immortality is a tough line to feel sympathy for when you’re in your teens.
I mean, sure, Middle-earth wasn’t a bowl of cherries. There was Melkor then Sauron screwing things up, stealing the silmarils and killing the trees and trying to turn the land into some goth rave Halloween spectacle and the elves were somehow signed on to clean up that whole mess and really the elves just want to make pretty things and sing happy songs but they were stuck with these two who just want to make sure nobody could have anything nice.
And don’t get me started on the humans and the dwarves and working at cross purposes and how greed and the lust for power keeps messing up everybody’s plans. Nobody is ever content.
Furthermore, the immorality of the elves doesn’t even make them Deadpool or anything. Maedhros loses a hand and it stays lost. No magical growing back of body parts. They also suffer physical and emotional pain. And they die, often horrible and painful deaths. I am pretty sure a huge section of the Halls of Mandos are set aside for dealing with just the mental trauma. Elven PTSD is real.
But still, after all that, they do get to hang around so long as the world lasts. I mean Elrond, at the end of the third age, is something like 6,500 years old. Bilbo running into him is like me running into somebody who was at the launch party for the Epic of Gilgamesh and still probably has a copy signed by the author in a closet somewhere.
At least, that is a summary of my thoughts when I was around 20, though I probably overstate the depth of my consideration, which was probably more along the lines of “that’s neat!”
But I was thinking about Elrond and his 6,500 years the other day. I saw Hugo Weaving in a TV show (Slow Horses, season 4), looking pretty old… I mean, they would need some real CGI to make him look like the early 2000s movie Elrond these days… which sent me to the thought of that particular immortal son of Earendil and Elwing… and time.
I am no longer around 20. I am around 60 now. And in the interval between those two ages my perception of time has changed.
When I was 20 working an eight hour shift was something that seemed to last forever. If we popped into a restaurant and there was a 30 minute wait, we’d go elsewhere… though not before putting our names in as “Donner” hoping somebody would get a chuckle when the hostess announced, “Donner party of four! Your table is ready!” to those who remained in the waiting area. I never found out how that played, never having the fortitude or patience at that age to simply sit still and wait.
Now if a restaurant says 45 minutes, that doesn’t seem so bad and the work day seems to zip by so fast that 4pm rolls up on me and I realize the day is almost at an end and I haven’t finished half the things I thought I would get done.
Everything is accelerated. Days, weeks, months… even years go by so quickly. The feeling of time passing, something almost viscerally slow in my youth, has faded such that it slips by without notice. My life is becoming a constant repetition of “is it Thursday or October or 2024 already?”
It is disturbing.
So I took that thought and tried to apply it to Elrond, wondering how his perception of time had adjusted after some 6,500 years. I mean, I can see why the elves started basically keeping to themselves… we probably die off before they have time to think about us.
I mean, I can imagine Elrond asking his staff, “Did we send a gift to King Arglebargle IV on the birth of his son?” only to be told that Arglebargle is dead… and so is the son… and the grandson… all having lived out their three score and ten while Elrond was lost in thought again about whether he should have noticed some flaw in the spear of Gil-Galad and if his fall was all his fault.
It is no wonder that the elves ended up paying little attention to the kingdoms of men, save for reference in some elven version pub trivia… though they probably focus more on the first and second age for that sort of thing.
The short lives of men barely add up to a season of British television in the scope of their interest… six quick episodes you could digest in an evening and will have forgotten about a week later. Even Sauron, who was just a lieutenant of Morgoth back in the day, must seem like the annoying neighbor who moved in up the street a while back and who you have to call the city about once in a while because he’s got three cars up on blocks out the street. It would honestly be easier just to put Imladris up on the market before the prices in the neighborhood tanked and put a down payment on a nice little bungalow in a quiet corner of Valinor.
I mean,the most surprising thing about the Council of Elrond is that he had the patience to sit through it while needed to bring the mortals up to speed on stuff that has been rattling around in his head for centuries. He wasn’t just relating the legend of Isildur taking the ring from the hand of Sauron, he was there when it happened and was telling this mortal, who might have squeezed out a few centuries of life were it not for bad choices, that this was a bad idea, something the then 3,500 year old Elrond knew in part because he’d also been around when they were made and had one of the rings that were a product of the whole venture.
So among the many merits of Elrond was not simply knocking some heads together when a bunch of 30-something halflings showed up with the magic dingus having both blundered their way through incredible peril while simultaneously delivering danger up onto his doorstep. Thanks Frodo! Nice job! Well played Aragorn! You’re going to do that then ask for my daughter? Yeah, there is going to be some steep requirements to get there buddy, just you wait!
But really, where the weight of time starts to feel like it must have been unbearable is when we get to dinner. It is quite possible that Elrond has had to decide what to have for dinner more than 2.3 million times.
I have had to decide what to have for dinner as an adult more that 15,000 times and honestly, it is exasperating at this point. Breakfast I can get by with some toast or cereal, lunch is just a sandwich or some leftovers, but dinner… dinner is a commitment, and anchor point, and generally kind of the main meal of the day and it is just too much some days to end up there and yet again have to make a decision.
I am a tad envious of my mom in assisted living… not that she is in the best shape or able to live her best life anymore… but meals are set and dinner is posted on the board and you get the main or the alternate or a burger or something as a standby if nothing else is palatable.
All I can say is that at least Elrond was spared trying to find something that both he and Celebrian wanted to watch after a day at the office on streaming. There are some miseries even the Eldar could not sustain. Talk about your unnumbered tears.