This is one of the most iconic scenes in all of movie history.
Luke: ...you killed him. Vader: No, I am your father.
But why? Why do we care that Vader is Luke's father?
Luke was still raised by his uncle Owen; he never even knew his dad.
Why does it matter that his father, a complete stranger, has a different story than he thought?
Well, obviously it's because despite Luke's father's literal absence in his life,
Luke always wanted to be like his father.
There's nothing for me here now.
I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.
Luke's mentality touches on one of the most powerful motivators in people's lives and also one of the most misunderstood.
And that's why in this video, I want to dive into how Luke was destined to become like Darth Vader,
how Kylo Ren is destined to become more like Han Solo, and how your relationship with your own dad shapes your destiny not just in the Star Wars universe
but in your life because it affects you more than you probably realized and it doesn't matter whether you think your dad was a good guy or a bad one.
Also, spoilers through Star Wars episode 7 coming and some speculation into episode 8 though I have no advance knowledge.
To begin, you have to understand that in every young boy's life,
there is some point where he absolutely idolizes his dad.
Even when boys don't have their father present,
they often feel a desire to be like him because he represents the ideal of what they might become.
Luke starts his quest to become a Jedi Knight for that simple reason.
Why would you become Jedi? Heh.
Mostly, because of my father, I guess.
At some point though, every young man discovers that his dad isn't perfect.
He might even discover that his father is deeply flawed.
Now, this usually happens much younger in life but since Luke never knew his dad,
he had an idealized vision of him and we see the drama play out on screen as an adult.
No! No...
It's at this point in Luke's life and in every young man's life that two opposing forces are set up.
On the one hand, there is the part of you that absolutely idolizes dad; he is just the ultimate in masculinity.
He set the blueprint by which you measure a man for better or for worse which
means that you likely modeled his behavior for years and are very much like him.
On the other hand, the part of you that hates his flaws because he was supposed to be perfect —
that part is absolutely crushed to realize that your perfect masculine vision isn't perfect after all.
So what many young men do is deny one of those two facets of their father.
Some deny that they idolize him, pushing that feeling into their subconscious.
In this case, they often grow to be like him without ever realizing it and they're
unable to grow past their dad's flaws — this is true of father figures as well as dads.
Others idolize their father so much that they deny his flaws, pushing those to their subconscious.
They try to become just like him, sometimes succeeding in taking on his worst traits.
My father was a great man.
You're father was a swine.
...just like your father — lazy, arrogant—
Don't say a word against my father.
Snape: Weak. Potter: I'm not weak.
Then prove it. Control your emotions. Discipline your mind.
Or they constantly feel like they've never lived up to his legacy.
In both cases, you wind up with someone who is stuck.
Instead of being their own person, they can only react to their father's shadow.
Worse, they can't accept this about themselves so they can't change it.
It's why Luke vehemently denies being like Vader despite the fact that he has the same feelings of anger when people hurt his loved ones.
If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will.
No!
You're gonna pay for all the Jedi that you killed today, Dooku.
We'll take him together. You'll go slowly on the left.
Anakin: I'm taking him now! Obi-Wan: No, Anakin, no! No!
It's also why Kylo Ren insists that he doesn't care about his father, Han Solo...
He means nothing to me.
...despite the fact that Kylo is inescapably like Han in fundamental ways.
Forgive me.
I feel it again... the call to the light...
Now I recognize that this sounds very Freudian that is fallen out of style
and I don't mean to say that every single person is going to react the same way.
But it is very common for young boys to go through these two phases.
First, idolization and then denial whereby the son makes the father-figure either perfect or monstrous.
This occurs subconsciously though which is why we don't notice it
and for most of us, both of these occur before birth through puberty so we don't really remember it.
The problem is that now you have a human who was glaring personality defects
but cannot see them because he is — one, unwilling to admit the massive
influence that his father still has on him and two, because he is unwilling to see
his father as a flawed-but-valuable human being.
And this is where dysfunctional behavior cycles arise.
For instance, Luke denies that he is like his father with his cool calm demeanor when he first meets the Emperor.
In time, you will call me Master.
You're gravely mistaken. You won't convert me as you did my father.
But it quickly becomes obvious that he is simply repressing his own feelings of hatred and anger and when the Emperor prods him, he lashes out.
I am defenseless. Take your weapon.
Strike me down with all of your hatred
and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
Luke doesn't realize that his true struggle is not with evil outside of himself in the form of Darth Vader or the Emperor
but with the evil that lives inside of him — his own evil tendencies.
This is beautifully illustrated by the scene in the cave on Dagobah
where Luke cuts down Darth Vader only to see himself.
In fact, it's only when Luke truly sees how like his father he is that he can stop fighting throw away his weapon
and actually grow past his temptation to join the Emperor and the dark side.
Fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side.
Never. I'll never turn to the dark side.
The same pattern plays out with Kylo Ren except instead of denying
his father's anger, he denies what he calls "his father's weakness."
We see Kylo completely disown the Ben Solo aspect of his personality that he considered weak like his dad.
Your son — he's gone. He was weak and foolish like his father.
But the weakness that Kylo is truly struggling with
is not his father's but his own which is why he's constantly in inner conflict.
Ironically but predictably, this unwillingness to accept his own weakness makes kylo unable to overcome that weakness.
You're afraid... that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader.
So in summary, if you're a guy, chances are that you've inherited your father's biggest personality flaws and are completely blind to that.
Therefore, those flaws are magnified and you can't even begin to fix them.
So what do you do? Well, the good news is that you don't actually have to reconcile all of this with your dad even though that would be a good idea if it's possible.
It's more about reconciling this conflict within yourself.
First, you need to accept that at some level, you probably still and did idolize your dad no matter how bad you might think he is today.
You have to accept that you're probably modeling him despite your best efforts
and paradoxically, it's by accepting the ways in which you are like him that you become free to be different.
And on the other hand, if you had a great relationship and you sort of still idolize your dad, you have to accept that he's not perfect.
His values do not need to be your values and that's okay.
I realized that this is all very philosophical and psychological so let me break it down with a concrete example from my own life.
My dad can be stubborn and argumentative which I always found to be
kind of a pain so when people would tell me that I was stubborn and argumentative,
I really didn't want to accept that so of course, I argued with them about it very stubbornly.
If they pointed out that my response was stubborn and argumentative,
I would just continue arguing and never really grew past it.
I was only able to actually become a little bit less argumentative and stubborn
when I accepted how much I look up to my dad and accepted that it meant that I'd become more like him than I wanted to admit.
In accepting that truth about myself, I became able to change.
So if you're wondering where your blind spots are, here's just a few questions to get you started.
First, what aspects of your dad do you dislike the most?
And second, do people ever accuse you of having those same traits?
You can also flip the order and ask yourself — first,
what negative traits do other people see in you that you tend not to see in yourself?
And second, is that something that your dad displayed?
This kind of self-reflection is necessarily difficult.
If not, you'd have caught on to it and fixed it years ago
but it's truly the key to profound personal change.
And if you're interested in more on this topic of finding your blind spots, your limiting beliefs and overcoming them,
I have a whole brand new course on emotional mastery which you can check out in the description.
It's a 30-day program to identify your hidden limiting beliefs
and help you bust through them and I'm opening up again in about two weeks
from today to a new round of people so if you want to join or just learn more about it,
go ahead and click the link in the description and I'll send you more information in a week or so.
Now, with all this psychological groundwork laid,
I'd like to go full fanboy here and speculate as to Kylo Ren's past.
I've got no inside information but I do have two leading theories
each one following the idolization and denial framework that we talked about earlier.
First theory is that Kylo was a sensitive kid
and Han wasn't the most present dad as Kylo sort of hints at here.
Han Solo?
I feel like he's the father you never had. He would have disappointed you.
Kylo wishes that he were closer with Han but he hates how much he wishes this.
So he swings back in the other direction and denies his love for his father.
He denies his similarities to his father and if Han was the hero
then Kylo vows to be the villain.
The other theory is that after all the fighting, Han didn't want his son to be a Jedi;
he'd seen how bad it could be so he limited Kylo despite the fact that he had great potential.
Kylo wanted to be a powerful hero just like his dad but he didn't understand
why he was holding him back and he always felt like he was in his shadow.
So the only way to be as important as his dad, Han Solo, was to do something horrible hence his turn to the dark side.
Either way, the central part of both of these theories is that it isn't
that Kylo doesn't care about Han, it's that he cares immensely about him so much that he can't handle it.
And I suspect that by the end of the trilogy, he'll come to terms with this in heroic fashion.
I have to say, honestly, the more stories I hear from folks
coming through our courses, I think that this is the case with everyone.
Now, I've spoken about father and sons in this video because that's the Star Wars
trope but it's true of every combination of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters
albeit in slightly different ways.
Also, if you're interested in a more philosophical-esque video next week,
the one thing that I noticed in my research for this video is that the philosophy of the light side of the Force kind of sucks.
Bury your feelings deep down, Luke.
So if you'd like me to dive into that in next week's video, let me know in the comments.
Also, be sure to subscribe to the channel if you want to see that video
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This was super fun video to make, I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one.