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In normal waking life, we perceive our center of experience as being fixed within our bodily borders, as if we’ve burrowed ourselves into a corporeal shell that seals us off from the outside world. We then call that shell “me,” and begin ascribing identifiers like “intelligent, funny, mother, son, friend, quirky, nice, attractive, ugly, fat, stupid, failure” onto it and declare it gospel. I’ll be bold enough to make the assumption that all of us-- whether it was during a change of careers or during a traumatic event-- have experienced a sort of crack in the shell that had always defined us. This blip in the continuity of our life may end up becoming our religion, our greatest fear, or perhaps just a “weird” thing that happened to us that we’d rather forget. However we make sense of these blips, they seem to challenge our sense of who we are in relation to the world, and as I’ll try to argue: who we want to become.
I’ve noticed that when these blips happen to me, I have a tendency to feverishly hold on tighter to the things I’m comfortable with, as if letting go of old patterns and beliefs threaten my entire existence. I’m reminded of the image of Luke Skywalker as he trembles over a terrifying precipice, holding on desperately so as not to lose his footing. If you remember the scene, you’ll know that he was running from Darth Vader, his tyrant father. Ultimately, Luke had two options: give himself over to the “prophecy” and join the dark side, or find in himself the courage to leap-- to change the script.
If you’ve seen Star Wars, you might remember what Darth Vader said to Luke as he stood on the ledge:
“Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny! Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son! Come with me. It is the only way.”
There is something about this scene that seems eerily similar to the way these blips present themselves; when our sense of continuity breaks-- or when the rug gets pulled from underneath us-- we want to scramble back into old scripts-- old patterns of behavior, as if to entrench ourselves deeper into our prophecies, no matter how destructive they may be. In Luke’s case, the script was to give into the dark side like his father, kill the emperor, then rule over the entire galaxy. A tempting offer, but perhaps a bit excessive. For us, our script might be to consume ourselves in excessive television binges, mindlessly scroll through Facebook, or maybe it’s to compulsively bite our nails until we draw blood. These are rather common scripts, but when they transition into the more tyrannical we might stumble into self-harm, bulimia, addiction, etc...
However it shows up for us is going to be unique, but the fact is that we all have our tyrant scripts running in the background. And just as Luke faced the horrifying realization that his tyrant-- the Dark Lord himself— was in his own blood, so to do we eventually come to terms with the fact that our scripts are a part of us. We don’t have it all figured out; we’re not perfect and that crack in our shell remains open no matter how many scripts we shove into it. Perhaps there is another way. as Leonard Cohen writes,
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
As we all know, Luke did not join the dark side; he did not betray the rebellion and conquer the galaxy with his evil father. He became a champion of the light, but not before grieving the darkness within him. He leapt from the ledge, and confronted the terror of the unknown; he let go of his prophecy and jumped into something new.
And so to change our tyrannical script is just as terrifying as Luke’s leap of faith , because to be anything other than our script will feel as if we’re standing on the ledge of a harrowing abyss. Our scripts provide us with, at the very least, the illusion of control. But, with some faith in our brokenness and a reminder that prophets don’t know everything, we may leap-- or at the very least— step toward a script we’re not ashamed to write. We may not have the Millennium Falcon to catch us before we hit the ground, but we do have support networks, creative outlets, and safe spaces to express ourselves without the harassment of the tyrant. And perhaps if we acknowledge the tyrant’s grip on all of us, and the terrifying courage it takes to change, we can have more compassion for those on the ledge.