Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a great book. I tried to read First Things First, but really didn't like that book. Perhaps I was too Jedi-like - arrogant, that is. On the other hand, maybe the book just wasn't as good because Seven Habits was so good - the way some people feel about the attempts at the PT after the greatness of the OT.

I want to focus on the idea of what Covey calls a "paradigm shift." As much as I loathe giving credit to Darth Ami for sparking my thoughts, this is not much more than a long comment to her last blog.

Hear that sound? It's me choking down my pride. **Ahem**

As some of you may remember, the words "Father" and "destiny" can be seen as interchangeable. Vader tells Luke, "I am your Father" when he means, "I am your destiny" (that is what Vader wants, to some degree or another). Luke's search for his father is the adventure that puts him face-to-face with his destiny. At the Cave on Dagobah, Luke looks at one potential destiny when he fights the ghost-Vader.

Luke, however, changes his destiny (kind of like Sarah Connor tries to do in T2 - only for John to experience failure in T3, oh well).

Think about this, though: Luke is Vader's destiny. If you believe that it was Anakin's destiny to bring "balance" to the Force through the Jedi purge and the overthrow of Darth Sidious, then you have to recognize that Luke made this possible. I'm not going to get into that here, but I think you know why.

Flip this mythological paradigm 180 degrees. Instead of the father representing the fulfillment of the son's destiny, the son has become the fulfillment of the father's destiny. Did Lucas arbitrarily or unconsciously buck the trend of 10,000-plus years of primordial mythological truth? Whether intentional or not, this paradigm shift reflects a societal shift.

Here's where Alan Alda fits in. I'm not sure why I'm picking on Alda, we all love M*A*S*H, right? But, at least to me, he represents the sensitive guy of the 70s that the chicks all dug. I remember seeing Ed O'Neill (of Al Bundy fame - another one of my heroes) on Letterman. Letterman asked Ed why he got into acting. Ed answered, "Well, I played football, but in my day you met more girls being an actor because they weren't that into football at my college." The pendulum swings and maybe Alda could be accused of emasculating males that resulted in the pendulum swinging back to the fascination with uber-males.

In the end, though, the pendulum not only swung, but it moved clocks. Our paradigm about men's relationships with their children has changed. We may go back and forth a bit on this new clock (which is not entirely attributable to Alda) but things have changed - for the better.

I'm remembering forcing my dad to give me hugs and kisses as I got older. I remember his un-ease with it all; I would imagine due to his relationship with his father. Now, he makes sure to give me a hug and a kiss whenever we say good-bye.

My dad used to be embarrassed to end a phone conversation at work with, "I love you." If I said it first, he would say, "Me, too." Now, he almost races to tell me he loves me.

And I'm here to tell you that children do fulfill your life's destiny round out every single thing you do in life. It's nice to see this reflected in art and in society. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer.

Back to the old mythology. What if Laius and Jocasta had not left Oedipus exposed? What if they had loved him and cared for him? He would have grown up knowing his parents; therefore, he would have been much less likely to kill his father in a fit of ancient road rage. He would also almost assuredly have not intentionally slept with his mother.

Laius and Jocasta brought about their own demises because they put themselves before their child. Anakin, however, put Luke before himself.

Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus could not escape their destiny because their principles were misplaced. Luke and Anakin changed their destiny because they had their principles in the right place.

A fundamental paradigm shift has taken place in our social consciousness and it is reflected in Anakin's archetypal relationship with Luke - and we have Alan Alda to thank for it.