A long time ago…
March 14th, 2010
I was a much bigger Star Wars fan before the continuity collapsed under its own weight, but I still get chills from the scene of Luke Skywalker looking out over the desert at the twin sunset. I gathered a few Star Wars soundtracks over the years, partly hoping for this song; little surprise I finally get it from YouTube.
I love to look backwards in time and think of how a younger me would react, if I told him all the things he was going to do, and how much he’s going to change. (Of course I wouldn’t actually try that, knowing that I apparently failed to do it.) I like the same thing on a larger scale: going back in time and having our society explain things to the society of several hundred years ago. Like Tony Robbins has said, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year but underestimate what we can do in a decade. Steady change compounded over time can have a huge effect, as all readers are assuredly aware. I had a lot of generally unreasonable shorter term expectations and plans that didn’t pan out, but the total change since a few years ago would make my head spin. Looking back I seem childish, petty, and much less capable. Hopefully I can say the same thing a few years from now.
Dropping into fiction for a moment, what does Luke expect as he stands there in that sunset, gazing out at those suns? On some nowhere little planet, working on some remote moisture farm, how much could he anticipate everything to follow? Who would he meet, what friends would he make, what would they teach him? What strange situations will he encounter, what distant worlds would he find himself on? What adventures would he be a part of? What kind of impact would he make? What tragedies would he face and what triumphs would he accomplish? How would he grow, who would he become, and what would he become capable of? This little world in which he’s lived all his years, how long will it persist, and years down the line, how normal will that sort of life still seem to him? But he can’t know any of that, and he’s got to go back inside and clean droids.
So how about us?
Might as well throw this in too:
LUKE: I can’t get involved! I’ve got work to do! It’s not that I like
the Empire. I hate it! But there’s nothing I can do about it right
now. It’s such a long way from here.
…
BEN: You must do what you feel is right, of course.