Midlife Meditation

Today I did something I haven't done in many years: I saw a movie for the third time in less than four months. The movie was Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  I saw it in a tiny second-run theater in Boise because there just weren't any first-run movies left in town that my son and I were both interested in seeing, and we needed to fill a few hours while my grandbaby napped after entertaining us for most of the afternoon. The first time I saw this movie, I wasn't completely sold on it. I'd not liked the first installment of this trilogy, which felt abbreviated, unnecessary, and a real downer to me, as the grand victory of Return of the Jedi  turned out to be hollow and temporary, with a resurgent empire not just overthrowing, but destroying the galactic republic. And this second movie certainly takes the depressing direction of its predecessor to a new level: by the end of this installment, the resistance has been reduced to a few dozen people, all of whom can fit on th...

Even at 16, I knew this was hokum. Yesterday morning at 10:15 (give or take a few minutes), I turned back into a 16-year-old. We arrived at the theater a half hour early, assuming there would be a line (there was not). The night before, we had purchased our tickets online, at an added cost of $1.50/ticket, assuming the show would be sold out (it was not). The theater was nearly full, though, and even arriving early enough to sit through all the sponsored content (ugh), we had to sit uncomfortably close to the screen to have three seats together. The ads ran, followed by a long string of previews, and then it happened: the sparkling Lucasfilm logo appeared. I gasped. Amy giggled at my excitement. A moment later, the brass chord that can mean only one thing rang through the theater, the prologue text began its crawl across the screen, and 38 years disappeared from my age. For two hours, I had fanboy thrill upon thrill as the sights and sounds I'd been craving since 198...