This May Be Worse Than Dying
A Stoic Reminder from Star Wars: Episode II
I was always puzzled by a particular scene in Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, where Anakin Skywalker and Padme are about to die in the gladiatorial arena of Geonosis. At this point in the movie, the flirtatious and forbidden romance between the two has been fully realized. They are smitten with one another and can no longer hide it. Anakin is a Jed Knight, sworn off of romantic entanglement, and Padme is a senator in the Galactic Republic that the Jedi serve.
Anakin and Padme are bound at the wrists and put aboard a chariot-type shuttle which will deliver them into the arena, where they are to be eaten alive by all manner of monsters.
Anakin turns to Padme, and says “Don’t be afraid.”
Padme stares at him deeply, “I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life.”
That’s a strange thing to say. Is he supposed to feel good about that?
I’ve sat with this for two decades now and had always chalked it off to bad writing on the part of George Lucas. But last week I might have come upon a new realization about what Padme was saying to Anakin Skywalker.
Over at the Daily Stoic, writer Ryan Holiday had a post about Stoicism and Mortality that spoke to me at just the right time when I had just rewatched Attack of the Clones. Holiday recalls the philosopher and statesman known as Seneca, who is known for many things including his complicated relationship to life and death. Seneca wrote, “You want to live but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”
You can be “alive” but not be living. We’ve heard this a lot in a number of places. It’s bumper sticker wisdom. But it’s not because the insight is cheap. Quite the opposite.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius would study the life and brutal forced suicide of Seneca. He remarked in his journal, “When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion — it is a kind of death.” He continues to say that if the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another are akin to death, we will experience a kind of dying quite often. And we should want nothing less.
Padme had enjoyed many years of a thriving political career. She had been free of the sort of distraction and messiness that a forbidden romance might bring into her life. Throughout the movie, as she resists her desire for Anakin Skywalker, at times quite awkwardly for both of them, she is almost in a kind of grieving stage for her more tidy and simple life.
By the time Padme and Anakin are captured on a mission and sentenced to death, she sort of feels like the “old her” is dead already.
We transform throughout our lives. We let certain versions of ourselves die so that new ones can live. They can’t always coexist. Never changing would be horrible.
Let it happen. There are worse things than dying.
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A family member of mine said about money, "You won't be buried with it". Sometimes you do have to 'splurge' and sometimes you have to turn down that extra shift to be there for something ultimately more important. These are both things I really struggle with after so many years of financial insecurity (says most of our generation...?). Great reminders as always, Stephen.