An Old Hope

As a kid, I loved Star Wars.

Even now I’m a grown man — allegedly — it still has an undeniable grip on me.

The goodies and the baddies.
Space. Space ships and laser guns.
Mystery. Wizards. Princesses. The triumph of good over evil.

I’m still fascinated by space. My favourite book series is The Expanse. And I loved Project Hail Mary, but long before that, before I was even ten, I didn’t realise the first film was called A New Hope.

To me it was just Star Wars.

The farm boy. The villain in black who breathed like a broken machine.

Star mother-effing Wars.

Like all good stories, I wasn’t analysing anything. I was absorbed. Hope wasn’t a concept. It was assumed.

As a middle-class white kid from suburban Sydney, hope was the background setting of my life. Of course good would win. Of course the Death Star would explode. Of course light would overcome dark.

Years later, when I was a teenager, the prequels arrived. We met Anakin before he became Darth Vader. A talented, sensitive boy pulled from obscurity. Told he was special. Told he was chosen. The one who would bring balance to the Force.

And then we watched him fall.

Even though we knew it was coming, it still felt wrong. As if it shouldn’t be possible.

On display were the vices we all recognise in ourselves: fear, loss, pride, resentment. A drift toward power disguised as protection. The bright, hopeful child becomes the masked enforcer of power.

In a world of constant temptation and instant gratification, it’s a slide many of us wish to avoid.

Now, I’m not the sharpest cultural analyst, so it only recently clicked for me: before there was a new hope, there was an old one.

Anakin was the original promise. The first belief that this time would be different.

And it wasn’t.

That realisation unsettled me more than a planet with two moons. Not just because of how long it took me to realise it, but because it isn’t just a plot device.

It’s history.

Nations rise with hope. Movements promise fairness and justice. Economies boom on the promise of prosperity for all. Technology connects us at the swipe of a finger. We declare a new era.

This is it. We yell.
We’ve learned from the past.
We’re better now.
We’ve solved it.

Francis Fukuyama even called it the end of history.

It wasn’t. It isn’t.

Because something always corrodes.

Fear creeps in. Power centralises. Institutions drift. Idealists burn out. The wounded grow resentful. The hopeful — yes, Gen X, I see you — become cynical.

Old hope collapses under the weight of human frailty and unexamined consequences.

And then, as always, somewhere in the rubble of the old, a new hope begins to form.

The story of humanity feels cyclical. Progress and regress. Expansion and backlash. We move forward, then sideways, then a little backwards. We are never permanently redeemed. And never irrevocably doomed.

We oscillate.

When I first contemplated that, it felt depressing. If every new hope eventually becomes an old one, what’s the point? Are we just replaying the same storyline with different costumes?

Then I remembered Martin Luther King Jr.’s description of the arc of history bending toward justice. He didn’t say it bends quickly. He didn’t say it bends automatically. He said it bends long.

Long implies effort.
Long implies resistance.
Long implies that we’re only a small part.

Maybe hope isn’t a permanent state. Maybe it’s a recurring responsibility. One, that only comes about when the old has been demolished.

In the story, Anakin succumbs. Luke resists. One chooses fear as control. The other chooses trust, even when it looks naïve. Even when evil feels overwhelming.

The difference isn’t destiny.

It’s choice.

That’s the inconvenient truth. We don’t get to live inside ongoing new hope. We inherit old hopes that faltered. We live through institutional failure. Cultural regression. Leaders who disappoint, as leaders always will.

We feel the pull toward bitterness. Toward power. Toward protecting ourselves at the expense of others.

Towards the dark side.

And we can’t look ‘out there’ for the next hope. But unlike the Star Wars universe, there’s no prophecy. No chosen one.

All we’ve got is the decision in front of us. And this moment. Right now.

To bend the arc, however slightly. Or to let fear bend us.

For there to be new hope, there must first be old hope. Something that worked for a while but didn’t quite stick. Something that broke under pressure but proved hope is possible.

Maybe that isn’t depressing.

Maybe that’s just the human condition.

We are always in the process of a new hope.

And I still love Star Wars because, in the end, hope’s all we’ve got. The chance to treat ourselves and each other in a way that makes tomorrow a little kinder than yesterday.

The choice to resist becoming the Vader in our own story.

An old hope behind us and a new hope ahead. Importantly, the relentless, ordinary, daily decisions about which one we become.

Every single day.

With the possibility that, one day, we ourselves will be someone’s old hope.