We are the champions my friends

The Retune Blog - 19th May 2023

I really hope this doesn’t spoil the mystery of anyone's childhood, but Star Wars follows all the age-old formulas for a classic hero story. In fact, it's been said that George Lucas was only able to finish the screenplay for the original Star Wars movie after reading a copy of Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces researched from his travels beginning in the 1920’s in which he demonstrated that there was a pattern to hero stories from across the globe and time.

This pattern usually begins with the hero (Luke) having to leave home (with his step Uncle Owen after the attack) to start a new adventure. During this journey they would usually meet a mysterious stranger (Obi-Wan Kenobi) who begins to reveal a repressed struggle within the hero (Luke’s unconscious awareness of the Force). As they begin to awaken to their destiny (being a Jedi). The tradition has it that the hero then meets the Goddess (Leah) who causes confusion in their feelings for them before being confronted with their relationship with their Father (ok, this begins in Star Wars but the Father being revealed isn’t until The Empire Strikes Back). And so it continues, with the point being that the story represents a human inner story as old as time, and still nothing has changed.

After studying the historical mythological tales, Campbell looked at the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and discovered that the same symbols and conflicts were still being played out in the dreams being researched by the psychoanalysts. We can see the same psychological and mythological ideas played out in song lyrics too, such as in Queen’s We are the Champions:

I've paid my dues, time after time. I've done my sentence, but committed no crime. And bad mistakes, I've made a few … But I've come through … We are the champions, my friends, and we'll keep on fighting till the end.

So, what can we learn from this hero journey which will help us to live life well. Here’s a few thoughts, first, viewing our lives as a story in which we face challenges and the need to be a hero is a common factor of being human. Although as humans we are all different, we all share a remarkably similar life narrative, even if we have different resources to access in relation to the choices we make.

Second, we often have a contradiction to resolve (or at least respond to). We’ve worked hard and been treated unfairly, made mistakes but have got away with it. In life you don’t always get what you earn but this is a reality for us all to experience, accept and then work with its reality rather than expecting a neat and tidy resolution.

Finally, we need resilience. Being a hero in our own lives. living like champions, doesn’t require us to be perfect but does require us to keep on keeping on. We truly do need to keep fighting to the end as no matter how well or bad we do, challenges will always arise and so should we.

So, as you walk through your life, do so with your head held high as your own life hero. Find that inner Luke (or whoever your mythological hero character might be!).