Disney Magical Mindset Podcast

Why Luke Skywalker Didn’t Become Darth Vader: The Power Of Choice

• Ruben R. Rios • Episode 70

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Get ready to go to a galaxy far, far away to explore one of the most powerful lessons in Star Wars: the power of choice.

Through the stories of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, we explore how fear, anger, hope, and attitude can shape the direction of our lives. While one surrendered to darkness, the other chose not to let it define him. Life may bring pain, loss, and unexpected circumstances, but no one can take away your ability to choose your response, your attitude, and who you become in the middle of it all.

Your circumstances don’t decide your story. Your choices do.

The Force is strong with YOU! 

Helping you reimagine what's possible and step into it! 

Welcome To Galaxy’s Edge

Ruben

Hey Reimagineers, welcome back to another episode of the Disney Magical Mindset Podcast. I'm Ruben, and this week we're heading to a galaxy far, far away. I was walking through Batu this week on Star Wars Day, may the fourth be with you, and it was the best experience, especially because finally the OG Star Wars characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo were there in Batu, and getting to see them, talk with them, and just experience the force with them there in Batuu was so amazing. And of course, dun dun dun dun dun dun Darth Vader as well. And while I was there in Batuu, you know, hearing the music, seeing families with lightsabers, taking photos, looking at the Millennium Falcon. I mean, there was so much energy and just excitement there in Batuu. It hit me. It really hit me as I was reflecting on this. I was like, I can't wait to share it with you that Star Wars has never really been about space battles. At its core, Star Wars is about choice. Now hold on to that because we're gonna dig deep with this. Star Wars is about choice. It's about who you become when life gets dark. And I think that's why these stories resonate so deeply with us. There's a reason why all these years later, Star Wars has such a fandom, like people love it. We we just can't wait to experience it. The fact that we get to live it out in Disneyland or Walt Disney World is just the best. It's the best. And and I know the reason why, or at least I think the reason why it just is so it's so amazing. Like it resonates so deep within us, is because life can get heavy sometimes, right? You you know this, I know this unexpected turns, disappointment, fear, loss, you know, pressure, that anxiety that we all feel, things not going the way we plan. And this this week, I just kept thinking about uh this quote from Victor Frankel that absolutely stopped me in my tracks. And and so I wanted you to see how I connected this back to Star Wars. Now, Frankel survived the Holocaust and he endured unimaginable suffering in a concentration camp. I mean, they took everything, everything. His wife, his family, his writing, his clothes, his wedding ring, I mean, everything else of material value. And there he said something in that he writes in his book Man's Search for Meaning. And here's what got me. Here's what got me. He said that they have taken from me everything I have except the power to choose my own attitude. Man, who everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of like the human freedoms, which is this, it's so powerful to choose your attitude. And that line, it just haunted me all week. I mean, you know, yeah, I it it just got me. And there, as as I was in Batuu, you know, in Galaxy's Edge, I mean, just I started thinking about this more and more and more, and I started thinking about Star Wars, and you know, because you you probably have heard this before. Like people will talk a lot about freedom and having freedom of will. Uh, you know, I'm using my free will um to do whatever I want. I I can go travel wherever I want, I can I can go to Disneyland whenever I want. But what if, and it's true, that is all true, but what if one of the greatest uses of your free will is choosing your attitude? Yeah, choosing who you become in the middle of your circumstances. Now that's power. And I think Star Wars illustrates this better than any or maybe almost any story ever told. So are you ready? Cuz here we go. When most people think about Star Wars, they think about Rebels versus the Empire, Jedi versus Sith, lightsaber battles and spaceships, which I love and adore. Like I love it all. But the real battle in Star Wars has always been, I think, internal. Yeah. Fear versus hope, anger versus peace, reaction versus response. And nobody represents this tension more than Anakin Skywalker. Now, and you know this, I'm just reminding you um and sharing that Anakin wasn't born evil, and that's important. That's important because he was gifted. There's no he was passionate, loving, I mean, he was loyal, but he was also afraid. And that's the tension that we see in his story. He was afraid of loss, afraid of pain, afraid of letting go. He was afraid of losing the people he loved. And slowly, what happens? Fear started shaping his mindset, and you can actually see it happen throughout the films. His fear turns into anger, and and his anger turns into bitterness, and his bitterness turns into hate. And eventually he becomes who we actually like, we had we are amazed and and astonished and admire Darth Vader, right? And I think one of the biggest lessons here is this the dark side didn't begin with hatred. It began when Anakin allowed fear to decide his attitude and shape his identity. Woo! Oh yeah, this is gonna be good. And if we're honest, all of us, like I think we all have had moments like that. I know I have. Moments where disappointment hardens us, moments where pain makes us cynical, moments where fear starts um, you know, narrating our story, moments where like we we mess up and it begins to like, you know, cause us to feel or fear like we can't do it again. You know, you get hurt and suddenly you stop trusting people. Like that's what happens in life. Like we all experience this, don't we? And and and you fail, and then you suddenly um um believe that you're a failure. And so you just kind of like give up and you go through one dark season and suddenly you start seeing your whole life through that darkness, and now everything just seems dark, and like you're never gonna get out of the dark because that's the way you're telling your story, or that's the way you're believing your story, and that's how it happens. It doesn't happen overnight. I mean, look at the story. That's why we need all of these episodes to get to the revenge of the Sith, right? You got one and two that leads us to uh finally Darth Vader becoming Darth Vader or Anakin becoming Darth Vader. It's little choices, little attitudes, little perspectives repeated over time. But then you get to episode four, and you have Luke Skywalker, which is now in Galaxy's Edge. You can see him there. It was so cool. I had a great interaction uh with Luke Skywalker, my daughter, my wife, we're all together, and it's like we it was just us with Luke. It was so cool. You can check that out if you ever want to uh see this experience. You can check it out on my socials. Uh, but you got Luke Skywalker, and what makes Luke so powerful isn't that he never faced darkness. It's that he did. It's that he also has a story, and it's so powerful, right? We see it. He experienced loss too, pressure, temptation, like everything that everyone goes through and experiences in life, which again, this is why I feel like we all love Star Wars or or us big fans, is because we resonate so much with the story, and and there's this iconic moment in Return of the Jedi when the Emperor is trying to provoke Luke into hatred. Do you remember that? Into anger, into becoming exactly what he's fighting against. And for a moment, Luke, whoo, I mean you you feel the tension, he almost gives in. And that's important too, because this episode isn't about pretending negative emotions don't exist. Luke feels anger, our emotions are valid, like he felt fear. Luke was, he struggled. He he felt the tension in the struggle, but he made a choice, and that's what I'm trying to get at today. He chose not to let darkness decide who he would become. And that's such an it's so important that distinction that we got to make. Your emotions, they're valid, they're real, but they do not become your identity because you're not what you feel, you are what you choose. Woo! Yes. Um your circumstances are real, they are valid. We we go through some things in life. You do, but they do not have to become your identity. They do not get the final say over your story, your story. Luke had every reason to hate, but he chose hope anyway. Ooh, that's one of the reasons why Luke is one of my favorite characters. And honestly, that may be one of the greatest superpowers a person can develop. Like we're talking about Jedi power now. Are you ready? The ability to choose your response in the middle of pain. And it's hard. I get it. I know it's hard sometimes. Not because life is easy, not because circumstances are perfect, but because you refuse to surrender your heart to bitterness. You refuse to give that away. That's your power. And every time you allow someone else that you're bitter because of what someone did to you, you can't forgive someone because of what they did. And I'm not saying that it's valid. Listen, I'm I'm with you. I'm hurting with you. But every time you don't forgive that person, what you're doing is you're giving that power away that that is yours to them because they're going on living their life, doing their thing, right? While you're still holding on and harboring that anger and that hurt and that bitterness because of someone else and giving that power that is yours away. You take that back. That thing is yours, that choice. That's what I'm talking about. That's that's your power, that's strength, that's maturity, that's power. That's like Jedi power right there. That's the Luke Skywalker power that we're talking about. The power to choose your attitude. But here, listen, here's what I love most about Star Wars. Okay, I love a lot of things. But it's even after all the this the darkness, this is really what gets me. Vader's story wasn't over. Woo-hoo! That powerful. Oh, I love it. I mean, we love Darth Vader. I just saw him again, he's there in Galaxy's Edge finally now. It was so cool seeing him come out of the TIE fighter with the smoke and the stormtroopers. I mean, it's awesome. But that's the beauty of redemption, isn't it? That's one of the reasons why, again, we resonate with Star Wars. One of the reasons I love it. Because in the end, Darth Vader still had one thing left. Oh my goodness, it's so good. He had a choice. That's what I'm trying to get at today. And when he sees his son suffering, remember that that moment? Something changes for the first time in a long time. He becomes stronger than fear. And in that moment, Vader chooses differently. He sacrifices himself to save Luke. You remember that moment when they're in that struggle with um Emperor Palpatine? You remember that? Darth Sidious? Vader returns to the light side of the force. Or he will, you know, it's gonna happen. And I think that that moment is so powerful because it reminds us of something we desperately need to hear sometimes. You ready? As long as you can still choose, your story isn't over. Like, in other words, as long as you're living and you're breathing and you've got life in you to live this one precious gift of life, like you have that power to choose, your story isn't over. I don't care how far gone you think you are, I don't care how bitter you've become, I don't care how many mistakes you've made. If there's still breath in your lungs, there's still another choice available to you. And that choice today, that's hope. Like, that's the power of choice. That's hope. That's why I love Disney storytelling so much. Because underneath all the adventure and imagination, these stories remind us what it means to be human, that we can choose hope today. We can choose life today, we can choose to tell a different story today, we can choose to believe a different story about ourselves. Today is that choice, like that's the power today. You get to choose your own attitude, and nobody, nobody gets to take that away from you. No one has the power to take away your choice of the attitude you will choose to live today. So I just want to remind you of this as we reflect on the power of Star Wars, like the story of Star Wars that that many of us, like we just love. Here it is. Life is gonna throw things at you that you never saw coming. Right? And and when I mention these things, you you resonate, you hear, you know. Like the things that get thrown at our way that that we just weren't expecting, like disappointment, heartbreak, fear, you know, loss, stress, unexpected seasons. You cannot control them. You you can't control all of it. You just it's it's there's nothing you can do when those unexpected stuff, like when they just hit you, they're out of your control. But hear me. No circumstances can fully take away your ability to choose who you become in the middle of it. You still get to choose what you believe about yourself. You still get to choose the attitude you carry, you still get to choose whether pain hardens you or grows you, you get to choose whether fear leads your life or hope does. Your circumstances don't decide your story. Your choices do. Your choices do, and that's your power, my dear friends. And no one, absolutely no one, can take it from you. So whether you're walking through a difficult season right now, I'm with you. I'm cheering for you, and I'm hoping the best for you. Or maybe you're standing in batu with the music playing and lightsabers glowing around you. Remember this fear is powerful, but it's never more powerful than your ability to choose. The force is strong with you. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Disney Magical Mindset Podcast. My reimagineer friends, if this episode encouraged you, would you share it with someone who needs the reminder today? If you know of some Star Wars fans who would just be inspired and encouraged by this uh episode, please, please share it with them. And in a galaxy far, far away. Remember, remember always to keep dreaming, to keep believing, and never forget that you are the magic because the magic is in you.