The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Ah, fantasy. Ah, heroes. Don’t we all want to be The Hobbit, discovering an untapped ability to be surprisingly brave, surprisingly ingenious. Or Gandalf. Wouldn’t we all like to be indispensably useful, full of magic, all-knowing, all-capable? Or elf-like even. Just to be merry and have plenty and sing about it.
But we’re mostly Thrain, aren’t we? Ponderous, self-important, plodding along towards what we imagine we deserve but forgetting to deserve it along the way, doing right only when it seems more difficult to do wrong, and dying only marginally fulfilled.
This is why we read fantasy. This is why we climb rocks. Sometimes, when you’re rock climbing, you are, just for a moment, fantastic.