Are We Gollums ?

‘Gollum’, is one of the interesting characters from ‘Lord of the Rings’, the masterpiece written by JRR Tolkien.

Gollum represents Greed, Ambition. He can go to any extent for the possession of the Ring.

Why Gollum is so obsessed with the ring?

The Ring gives Magical Power.

But the Ring also has the power to corrupt people quickly.

You all must be wondering why I am talking about the Ring and Gollum now although I read that book two decades ago?

Similar to the ‘Ring’, what I noticed is that all of us have got a Ring in our Hand, which we call ‘Mobile’.

And just like the Ring, Mobile has the power to make you invisible from the world, you get so deeply engrossed that you are unable to see anything else. You are busy playing games, no matter how many times you have already played it, but winning the levels one after another reaching to the most difficult level of the game and again start cracking it. Some are doing the same with the Facebook / Insta feed, they keep on scrolling, the quest to find is unending. But the main point is missed out, What were you finding in first place?

If that’s not enough then we do have Netflix and Amazon like platform which allows to view movies after movies, Series after series and yes, seasons after seasons, sometimes watching for no reason.

There is continuous usage of data, which telecom companies are happy to provide you, of course at a cost. By now most of us must have consumed TBs of the data and may not find true usefulness of even MBs of data.

It brings me to the point that we are the ‘New Gollums’ of this Digital world surrounding us.

The Greed, The Ambition and of course the so-called cleverness we have but where is the control point. Do we know where to stop?

‘Frodo’ the boy with bright eye and perky personality is another interesting character from the book. He becomes the Ring bearer. He was chosen to take the Ring to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring.

Frodo didn’t fall in the trap of the power of the Ring. There were quite a few occasions where he was attracted to devilish side of the power of the Ring. But he maintained his calm. His purpose was to destroy the ring for betterment of the world and go back home.

In the era of explosion of the technologies, dragging everyone on every side, most are clueless and just driven by the unknown force. Many are distracting themselves with pleasure as they can’t find a deep sense of meaning.

The interesting part of the story was the fight between Gollum and Frodo in the end.

It resembles the fight of our mind while putting down the mobile. Where Gollum is asking to play one more game, clear one more level, scroll one more the feed, watch one last show. But what is Frodo doing, is he just watching helplessly?

Yes, Frodo is fighting to stop but most of the time gets carried away. Gollum has taken the lead and Frodo is struggling to get out. But in the end the Frodo gives his all and makes his way clear to destroy the Ring.

So we have both, Gollum and Frodo within us. How many times has Gollum won over Frodo?

Why do you think Frodo wins in the end?

It's because He had ‘The Purpose’ to free the world from evil and go back home.

What’s your purpose my FRODO?