I can practically hear it in Gandalf's voice, though this particular quote did not find its way into the movie adaptations. It's a wonderful phrase from the venerable Mr. Tolkien, though it perhaps has been diminished in our day and age, repeated ad nauseam as it has been on coffee mugs, t-shirts, satchels, bags, and so forth. But don't let its ubiquity diminish its meaning.
From the man who wrote the much beloved The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he should know a thing or two about wandering, even if by many accounts he rarely ventured far from his Oxford residence in his elder years. His stories are by their very nature about wandering. In The Hobbit, we follow Bilbo and a band of dwarves as they wander their way to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim that which was lost – taken, rather, by Smaug the dragon. In The Lord of the Rings, we follow Frodo and Sam as they venture forth with the One Ring on their wandering way to Mount Doom, a task that they believe themselves entirely unfit for.
Wandering, perhaps, does not convey the right meaning here. Or, at least, it is misunderstood. These characters were, more accurately, seeking, which is to say that they were wandering only insofar as they did not always know precisely where they were going. But they did not lack for purpose.
Bilbo's task as the burglar may have been unclear to him at times, when he was wandering through the forests of Mirkwood or riddling with Gollum in the depths of the Misty Mountains; but his purpose was quite clear: to help the dwarves reclaim their homeland, a rather noble purpose. In a similar vein, Frodo (and Sam) may have wished to not have the burden of the ring, losing their way often and being caught up in a quest far greater than themselves; but that added weight is precisely what gave their journey purpose. Without the task of destroying the ring, they would have had no greater purpose and would have been reduced to mere wanderers.
And so it is with life, though the difference may not always be as obvious as in literature. Many of us appear to be wanderers and hopelessly lost, when we are, in fact, seeking. Someone fresh out of college, dispirited in their job search and wondering – not for the first time – whether they chose the right major, takes a job at the local golf course until they can find the opportunity they are looking for. Are they lost? Or merely seeking? The answer is not always clear.
To some extent, nearly all of us seem to be seeking in our own imperfect ways. It's just that one man's seeking appears to another as idleness. And, conversely, one man's seeking appears to the other as desperation. Some wish to keep up with the Joneses, while others have different aims. Neither is wrong. Too often we believe that there is a narrow path to success which must be adhered to, without acknowledging that success looks different to everyone. Different paths cannot simply be written off as wandering.
Some of us are indeed lost, but not all of us. And that does not mean that lost wanderers, once lost, cannot again be found. At times, one must go with the current. At others, one must take the bull by the horns. But either of these actions will take time, and we must do our utmost to be patient along the way. And, as Tolkien's characters demonstrate, the purposes we unearth are rarely focused solely upon ourselves. Sometimes our purpose is to be found by looking to a higher power (or trusting to fate, as some would have it), and striving to be deliberate in our actions but aimless in our direction, so that we may better discern where we are being led. And so we wander, but are not lost. We are deliberately aimless.
