Lost

Please bear with my obsession with things Lord of the Rings (the film) a little longer.

At the end of the story, Frodo Baggins and his friends return to Hobbiton, Frodo to Bag End. He writes about how he has been changed by his long journey - that his return home hasn't been a return home for him; because he has changed and home no longer feels like home.

It feels like this for me, sometimes. Yes, I am home, and am happy to be home. But some of the details are no longer familiar and, in fact, feel discordant. Most particularly the relationships I have with certain people. I feel as if the month away has changed me in such a way that I can no longer connect with them. As a point of fact, what some of them have said, the way some of them have behaved, seem outrageously indulgent, sometimes offensive. It's as if I no longer have much in common with some people whom I regarded as friends.

What does one do in this case? Do I continue this charade of maintaining friendship with individuals whose values, beliefs and actions no longer correspond with mine? Do I let the connections I have had with them gradually attenuate and eventually fade away? Is the friendship we form with people based on more than just shared values and beliefs?

I don't have the answer.