May the Force Be with You

I hopped on my iPad with the intention of sharing a reflection on joy and grief. Then I wrote the date down. And I decided I had to pivot. 

I can’t assume all of us are Star Wars fans. But I can assume most of us are. My son Darshan, who is almost 9 years old, is absolutely obsessed with it. So I get to experience the magic through his eyes as well as mine. The final season of the Clone Wars has been our latest vehicle into that mythical realm.

George Lucas was deeply informed by the work of Joseph Campbell. We think of it as “the hero’s journey.” And it certainly is that. But it is most helpful to think of it as the work of rescuing myth for the post-modern age. 

Myth is how we make meaning. Myth is our way to grapple with the fundamental human questions of “how and why.” How did we get here? And, why are we here? Modernity undermined myth. And post-modernity has left us adrift.

Myth. Ancestral stories. The archetypal pattern of the stories that resonate within us. These are keys to our quest towards conscious masculinity. Some of it needs to be updated. But much of it continues to hold fundamental truths.

I was watching the latest episode of the Clone Wars and I could not help but reflect on my very worst moment as a man. A chip implanted in the brain of every clone meant that all of them, even the best and most heroic among them, could flip like a switch into something terrible, dangerous and bad. 

The chip had been there from their earliest childhood. And most of them did not even know to look into it. When their leader flips towards that which is murderous within him, he thinks he is doing it in service of the cause that he has always lived for. 

It takes a powerful intervention. The work of a woman who has chosen to no longer be a Jedi. To call on “the Force” with her hands on his head. “I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.” She repeats the mantra over and over as she works to extricate “the chip.”

Patriarchy is like this chip. 

I am one with the Force.

The Force is with me.

Saludos,

Gibrán