My dad first introduced me to Star Wars when I was about three years old. While I don’t remember whether I first saw Return of the Jedi (Episode VI) in the theater, or “the original” — Episode IV: A New Hope — it doesn’t matter: the Force had touched me, just as it had touched countless millions of people around the world, spanning all walks of life, all ethnicities, all age groups, and all religions; and just like that, America had its first — its only! — true fairy tale, our very own King Arthur stories, a true classic that will forever stand the test of time, an ageless saga of good versus evil, love versus hate.
Curiously — even as a young boy — I was never particularly enamored with Carrie Fisher or her character, Princess Leia — I was always more drawn to the swashbuckling Han Solo of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill’s too-good Luke Skywalker, and, somewhat alarmingly, cinema’s most infamous villain, the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader (I lost track how many Halloweens I dressed up in his sinister outfit and mask, painstakingly hand-crafted by my mom, boots and all) — but her role in the Star Wars universe helped to define not only an entire generation of 1970s and 1980s kids, but future generations yet to be born, as it continues to do so today.
Her role in a saga composed of one part Shakespearean tragedy (Anakin’s story = a far more tragic version of Macbeth), one part zen buddhism, and one part Arthurian tales, provided not only a profoundly introspective view on what it means to remain firmly focused and rooted in the present, never to be tempted by jealously, fear, and anger — which, as we all now know, leads to the Dark Side — but also what it means to remain patient, and to control our feelings.
Indeed, the paradox surrounding the Force — that the evil Sith were consumed by passion, while the Jedi trained to remain dispassionate — and its beautiful, simple elegance, has proven not only to be one of cinema’s greatest stories, but an immensely valuable lesson which all of us would do well to heed now and then.
So for all those countless times I re-watched the original Star Wars through my childhood of the 1980s; through the (occasionally annoying) re-releases of the 1990s; the (mostly awful, yet still enjoyable) prequels of the 2000s; the blessing of Star Wars’ renaissance of the 2010s, and the not insignificant or trivial number of times that the ways of the Force has helped guide me, focus me, and calm my mind, it is with true sadness that I grieve Carrie Fisher’s passing, and that I thank her for providing not just an iconic component to my upbringing, but for providing such a pure and simple joy to my life, and those of countless others around the world, as she will continue to do so for ever and ever….
