Generational Force

This evening the Tribe & I decided to re-watch the Star Wars series as it has been a few years since we’ve seen it.  The initial plan was to simply begin with “A New Hope”, however, I become much too excited and simply had to watch my very favorite of the series, “The Empire Strikes Back”. 

When I was a kid growing up in Midland, Texas, my family was very close friends with Ann Clough. Ann’s son David was a couple of years older than I and was obsessed with Star Wars, so I therefore became very familiar with “The Empire Strikes Back” upon its release in 1980.  

 Our Saturdays together were spent reenacting that movie line by line (I had the book and read it numerous times).  David was Han Solo, I was Princess Leia and my sister was usually Chewbacca (or Luke Skywalker).  This may have been where her  resentments started, I’m not sure.   I was so good at imagining myself as piloting the Millennium Falcon that it is truly difficult for me to think back to those years and not perceive it as a reality.  I knew the ships, the weapons, every part of that movie. 

The three of us(David, my sister and myself) were attending Trinity School, a parochial school with a chapel service every day.  At some point in the service (I forget when), Reverend Peterson would say “May the Lord be with you”, to which we all replied, “And also with you”, and he would close with, “Let us pray”.  At that point in my young life, “The Empire Strikes Back” was such a paramount part, that I melded religious services with the Force, and every time I hear “May the Force be with you”, I instinctively reply “And also with you.  Let us pray”.

What I appreciate so much about Star Wars and other movies released in the 80s is how meaningful they seemed to be.  There seemed to be a some sort of a lesson or point in all of them, whether it be E.T.,  Indiana Jones, Tootsie, Ghostbusters, Ferris Bueller or Rocky.  Even Die Hard wasn’t simply a mass of explosions…there was an actual plot.  I look back at my youth and see meaning.

However....

What makes us think that our youth was better than the youth of today?  Yes, they won’t get to save their texts and read them in 30 years the way I have saved notes from friends.  You know the “W/B/S!!!  PRIVATE!!!” little note folded up “just so”, handed off in the hallway between math and bio.  No, they didn’t have the Walk-Man or know how to make a mix tape (or splice a cassette).  They don’t know about phone cords and how tangled they would always get, or how super cool MTV was when it actually played music videos!!!  The most popular video game was Super Mario Bros and the goal was to save Princess Peach!  No blood or raping on that game, and everybody seemed to love it.  Remember Trapper Keepers?  Oh, man…. I think I’m talking myself out of making my point.

Those times were such a joy, so filled with excitement and amazing things, and yet, who is to say it’s worse for our kids now? They have never not known a world without the Internet, cell phones, visible bra straps (eww), but this is their reality, just as imagining I was piloting the Millennium Falcon was mine.  I know our parents were shaking their heads with similar feelings.  Remember, they were the children of the 60s and 70s and had seen a life and youth much different from the one we faced.

It is a cyclical, generational “Rite of Passage” that kids must experience.  I know I wouldn’t want to be a kid today, but how many of our parents would have wanted to exchange childhoods with us?  There is a saying about experiencing someone else’s problems and how quickly you would give them back and take back your own. This same concept is applicable to youth.  It is each generation’s path.

I, however, am grateful my generation had the Force.