You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

I will not walk backward in life.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.