The Master of Words

What’s your chosen field? Are you innovating in it? Let’s say for example you’re fascinated by words. Yes, words. You love language. You love the sound of words, how they fit together, their architecture, their history. In fact, you want to invent your own words, even your own language. Of course, how would that even make sense? Who would use your invented words? Well, perhaps then you’d need to invent a people, maybe a world in which all the words and the languages you were inventing would fit, would make sense.

Such was the journey of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien who was born on this day 126 years ago. Did he set out to change the landscape of fiction and film? Hardly, but such is the journey of an innovator. They set out with a desire, a vision, a yearning. It’s blurry at first but it pulls them inexorably to a future that’s hard to even express, they just know it’s out there. Tolkien’s journey started out as bedtime stories told to his sons John, Michael and Christopher. Where would it take him? Little did he know the weight his words would carry, the ripple effect they would have on his planet.

What are your ideas? How will you branch out? As Bilbo would say, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Each year on 3 January, the Tolkien Society encourages Tolkien fans from across the world to celebrate the Professor’s birthday with a simple toast-drinking ceremony. At 9 PM your local time, simply raise a glass and toast the birthday of this much loved author. The toast is simply: “The Professor!”