The Luke Skywalker Complex

"Okay boss, I invoiced all those
power converters we had shipped
from Tosche Station."

I was off last Friday, but that's not what this story is really about. A day off means that I have to work that much harder to make sure everything runs smoothly in my absence. Having a day off can be really stressful. I know it sounds irrational, but in all fairness I'm not always the most rational of people. As absurd as it might be I have myself convinced that if I abandon work for one day the whole place may come down around me. (This is doubly irrational when you take into the account I have only been working in my current job for three months.) Now, I am well aware that my work has survived many years before I ever came along, but I still feel the need to prepare for every possible contingency, whether it be a major network crash, printer running out of paper, or an alien invasion. (FYI, the plasma rifle was disassembled into three separate parts and hidden around my office.) Returning to work on Monday I found that the place did not burn down nor was it invaded by malevolent extraterrestrials, and thus all my worrying was for nothing. So why do I do this?

It all comes down to what I call the Luke Skywalker Complex, and I would argue that such an affliction of the mind is not limited to soley me. It all stems from fears driven by my own desire for self-worth. I think we all want to believe that we are the most important people, not only in our jobs, but in our families, among our friends, and other social and work-related settings. A study (or maybe a Snapple cap) I was reading recently pointed to the idea of being needed as a major source for our feelings of happiness and self-worth. Whether we actually are crucially needed or not usually seems irrelevant to our increased feelings of happiness. By believing that those around us and the things we do would be reduced to a horrific and fiery wreckage without our amazing and awe-inspiring presence, is usually just another way of validating ourselves... much like Luke Skywalker.

Think about Luke and his position to the Rebellion. Skywalker is just some kid from a desert world on the outer-rim. Sure he is a half-decent pilot, but in the beginning he's not even a ranking officer. Realistically, Leia is much more important as the daughter of one of the Rebel Alliances founders, (Jimmy Smits,) and as a representative to the newly disbanded Imperial Senate. However, the only difference between you and Luke is that without him there is a good evidence to show that the Rebel Alliance probably would have hastily become nothing more than a dirt stain on the boot of the Empire. The whole Death Star incident aside, just look at the Empire Strikes Back. Luke takes a vacation to Dagobah for a few weeks, and long story short, Han spends the next few years of his life in carbonite as a mantle piece in Jabba's palace. In other words, Luke literally is one of the most important people in the Rebel Alliance and to his friends, even if he never even reaches the rank of general (at least not in the movies.) Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are actually promoted ahead of him, which really brings us to a whole other point.

"You think he'll be mad I forgot the quarterly reports again?"

Luke for all his hard work, dedication, and proven importance to the Rebellion is actually passed over for promotion for men who are proven smugglers, gamblers, and mercenaries. I imagine Luke is the kind of person who spends all weekend preparing a presentation, graphs, charts, figures, etc and when he walks into the meeting on Monday morning finds himself out-shined by Han Solo who probably wrote something down on his breakfast napkin 15-minutes beforehand and just pretty much winged his entire presentation. We won't even go into Lando who somehow achieved the rank almost immediately, and after betraying some the Alliances' most valuable members and one of his best friends. He must have had an amazing resume.

However, this only serves to show the contradiction of the Luke Skywalkers of the world. Our irrationality is only further proved, because if you ask anyone who grew up watching Star Wars the overwhelming majority would probably tell you how much they would rather be like Han Solo than Luke Skywalker. I mean, let's face it, who really wants to be an overworked, under appreciated, and sometimes whiny Jedi-wannabe, when you can spend your life getting by on your natural luck, charm, and by sleeping with a (at least one that we know about) princess?