National Post (National Edition)
How Star Wars is helping Chris Knight survive the pandemic
Unlearn the fear, unlearn the anger and take things one parsec at a time
It's the summer of 1983. I'm 13 and nestled in an air-conditioned cinema in Scarborough, Ont., watching the third (and final!) Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi.
But something is amiss. Luke Skywalker is on the Emperor's flagship, facing off against the combined might of Darth Vader and Palpatine. A classic good-versus-evil showdown. Except the Emperor doesn't see it that way.
“I can feel your anger,” he tells the young Jedi. And then: “Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey toward the dark side will be complete.” Luke, the quintessential questing hero, looks deeply troubled. And I don't understand. How can anger, directed at evil, turn a good person to the dark side of the Force?
I finally get it now, all these decades later. Young Chris hadn't lived through a pandemic. Yet.
For the past 16 months, our planet has been beset by an infectious disease worse that any in living memory. This seems a good time to include the caveat that I've had it easier than most. I kept my job. I even saved a little money. And no one close to me has died, although I've seen good friends brought low by this plague.
Still, I've been affected. We all have. Back in April (which feels like a year and 12 parsecs ago), Toronto writer Anne T. Donahue summed up the feelings of Ontarians in an article titled I Don't Know To Not Be Livid Anymore. (I think in her anger she left out the word “how.”) The column reeled off a laundry list of pandemic problems, including a lack of paid sick leave, poor provincial leadership, endless lockdowns and an inadequate vaccine rollout.
Some of these things have gotten a little better, but the gist of the piece was that it made her mad. And not just in the way that being cut off in traffic can make you mad. Anger had become her default setting. Or as she said: “I don't know how to see a display of positivity and not immediately comment, `Who the hell do you think you are?'” (And aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?)
I can relate. In fact, I wrote to Anne to thank her for the piece, for making me feel a little less alone. Because through the pandemic, I've felt a welter of negative emotions toward anything pandemic related — and, by extension, at anyone in a position of power, real or imagined, political or social, to do something about it. I wake up angry. I go to sleep angry. I think I'm a good person, but if I have a dark side, this is it. And it's been growing.
It started with fear — fear of contagion, of contracting COVID, of spreading it. And Yoda can take it from there. “Fear is the path to the dark side,” he says. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
I'm angry at anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdown advocates and general conspiracy theorists. I'm angry at any teacher or nursing-home worker who refuses to get vaccinated, and more broadly at anyone who delays or refuses a shot for any reason other than a valid medical one (and those are vanishingly few). I'm angry at any politician who doesn't take this seriously, whether through outright denial, inadequate messaging or vacationing during lockdown.
I'm angry that there's been almost no discussion about making vaccination mandatory. If you know Star Wars you'll remember the black, needle-tipped sphere that Vader used to torture Princess Leia. If I could I'd send one of these scary Imperial drones to every household in Canada, but bearing a sweet, life-saving cocktail of mRNA.
I'm angry that vaccine passports are being debated rather than simply implemented. For a while I was even angry at the CBC for reporting on the rare side effects of AstraZeneca, because as I see it anything that adds to hesitancy also adds to the death toll. “Why not report on the risk of driving to a vaccination clinic?” I once yelled back to the radio. Not a proud moment, I know. Yoda would counsel: “Control, control, you must learn control!”
I'm angry at Adam Skelly for opening his Toronto barbecue joint in the middle of a lockdown. I'm angry at Rod and Ekaterina Baker, the wealthy couple who flew to Yukon and lied so they could get one of the first vaccine doses.
Oh, and lately I've become angry at Ontario for not opening up more quickly. If you're anti-mask or marching against lockdown you've earned my ire. But if you're too pro-mask, or you're tweeting about how opening movie theatres on July 16 is a recipe for disaster? Then I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I want masking to end as soon as it's safe, though I do sometimes feel like Luke Skywalker whining to Uncle Owen: “But it's a whole 'nother year!” (Owen's level response: “It's only one more season.”)
I'm tired of social distancing, of giving everyone on the street a wide berth. I can hear Han Solo's voice in my head: “Keep your distance. But don't look like you're keeping your distance!”
And it drives me bonkers that across the continent, there are districts (such as Ontario) seemingly in full panic mode, and those (most of our stateside neighbours) with no health restrictions at all. Or as Grand Moff Tarkin once said: “The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line.”
By this point a good many readers will have found something in my position with which to disagree, and may conclude that I've already crossed over to the Dark Side. To them I quote the sage Obi-Wan Kenobi: “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view ... you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
The Emperor knew a thing or two about hatred and anger. They can indeed make one powerful, or at least make one feel powerful in the face of powerlessness. Donahue's article points out that anger can be a spark for creating change. At the very least, it can be a shield that gets us through the day.
But it's ultimately untenable. How long until Sith Lord anger crystallizes into hate, or until the desire to send a mandatory vaccine morphs into wanting to Force-choke those who refuse it? Again quote Yoda I must: “Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.”
I understand Return of the Jedi more than when I was 13. And that in turn has helped me understand the pandemic a little better than I might have. To be clear, the Dark Side still has a strong hold on me, and as long as any vestige of the this continues, I imagine it will continue to pull at my soul.
I can still hear Palpatine's cackle, and his mocking remark to Luke: “You will find that it is you who are mistaken about a great many things.” But I can also recall the words of Jedi Master Yoda: “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Unlearn the fear, the anger, the hate and the suffering.
It won't be easy. It won't be quick. I might have to wait until that spiky Death Star that is COVID-19 is vanquished, and we're all dancing in the streets like happy Ewoks. But I think it can be done. I'll try not to Force it.