The Ringbearer's War: Frodo’s impossible choice and the habit that makes men unbreakable

This Hobbit Took the Suicide Mission Everyone Else Refused

© Warner Bros. (New Line Cinema)

We’re in the Council of Elrond. A circle of the great: warriors, kings, wizards. Men with armor, elves with blades, dwarves with axes. And in the center, on a stone table, one small golden band that fills them all with terror.

Everyone’s talking. Everyone’s arguing. Who will take it, who should carry it, who might survive it. Deep down, every one of them knows: this is a suicide mission.

And that’s when a halfling, a barefoot farmer from the Shire, stands and says: “I will take the Ring… though I do not know the way.”

Frodo isn’t the strongest in the room. He isn’t the fastest, the smartest, or the most skilled. But he’s the only one who refuses to let fear win. He knows the weight is unbearable. He knows the fate of his homeland is in the balance. So he says yes.

Frodo doesn’t choose the Ring because he wants glory. He chooses it because it needs to be done. In war, whether it’s Omaha Beach or the black gates of Mordor, true heroes never wanted the fight. They just saw what had to be done, and they did it. Even if it killed them.

Most young men today feel like the odds are impossible. The student debt, the job market, the weight of expectations, the noise of social media—it feels like Mordor everywhere you look.

And it’s easy to freeze, to look at the mountain in the distance and give up before you’ve even started. But Frodo’s story says: don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t stare down the final boss before you’ve even taken your first step out the door.

You level up by walking. You grow by carrying the next burden in front of you. You push back on problems by building a fellowship, and finding a friend. No one beats the Dark Lord in one swing.

Every human stares down the Ring of Power. Every human is like Bob in Thunderbolts, staring down the blank, gimlet glare of the Void, who tells you ‘You’re nothing.’

Our job is not to argue with it. Arguing is where you get stuck, where you falter, where you fail. Before that conversation even starts, you make a decision. This is a genius of the masculine spirit, when we train it. We see a problem, we go to work fixing it.

Frodo volunteered before the fear of his own smallness gagged him back into silence. He was still afraid, but he shouldered it anyway. When no one else is stepping up, it’s down to you.

That’s the habit of men who stand when the world stays down.

Don’t worry about how you’ll survive Mordor. Worry about taking the next step out of Rivendell.

Frodo never made it because he was an epic hero. He made it because he refused to stop. Because his best friend was a gardener, and together they found their own way deep behind enemy lines to save the future of the world.

That’s heroism as hard as Normandy and as brutal as Hacksaw Ridge: I’ll keep going, for just one more day. I can do one more.

The Frodo Challenge

Wake up. Look at the task right in front of you. Not the mountain, not the war, not the thousand steps ahead. Just the next task. And then do it.

Tomorrow, you’ll do one more. Then the next. Then the next.

The Ring will show up in your life every single day, without fail. And it will threaten you to sit back down. To stay comfortable. To let it slide this once, and get it next time. It will feel like imposter syndrome.

Your challenge is to not wait. Take out the trash. Drive over and do the thing they asked. Go for a run and check in on your sick friend.

Pull out a journal, or a note app: every day, think about one good thing you did that you’re a little proud of. After seven days, you’ll have done seven things you’re proud of.

Discipline is carrying the weight one step at a time until the mission is done. Don’t wait for the right moment. Don’t wait for strength you don’t have. Don’t plan on saving the world from your basement before you even have a life worth living.

God assures us that strength is given the moment you need it.

And then it might be the strength of a warrior to lift a car on its axles and haul a frightened child to safety. That’s happened. It might be the spiritual strength to stare down an emperor and choose exile over worshipping pagan idols. It might be the moral strength to stand firm against a job request, get fired, and start again.

When you start paying attention every day, you’ll feel the Ring as the urge to hide. It will be your imposter syndrome gently guiding you to hide under the bed, and do nothing. No man of God ever healed their world from under a bed.

Step up. Shoulder it. Do the best good you can. That’s how Frodo made it, and his heroism saved a world, only because he put one foot in front of the other.

You can too.

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