The story how Star Wars influenced my life is really a story about my dad, real-life Jedi knight.
When he was still young, his father left the family for selfish reasons. The son grew up in poverty, but through hard work and determination became the first person in his family to get a university degree and became a successful trauma and vascular surgeon. He was a healer with the will to make a positive difference in the world. In 1977, the young man went to see A New Hope when it came out, and left the theater forever changed and with a fresh lifetime supply of inspiration.
Five years later, I was born, and another two years later, my brother arrived. By then, Luke Skywalker had become far more than a movie hero to our dad, but a role model. In a world that seemed dark and hopeless at times, dominated by violent and oppressive forces outside our control, in an occupied country, following Luke’s ideals meant striving to be a force for good against all odds, one that relied not necessarily on violence but on truth and the inert harmony, energy and love of the universe itself. This concept of the Force seemed just a hair’s width removed from something real in our own world. It was something that a sensitive human could actually feel within themselves, within their heart, on a quiet walk in nature or while gazing at the glory of the stars in a clear night. But it was also something that several real world religions had put into concrete words and according to them could actually use. With New Age spiritualism on the rise, that power promised to be open to everybody who would seek enlightenment, and dad was going to do just that.
While he and my mom began their journey into esotericism, me and my brother grew up surrounded by Star Wars toys. There were also the Droids and Ewoks cartoons. We weren’t allowed to watch the actual movies yet – our household was strictly anti violence. Not until we turned ten. But years before that, we listened to mom’s and dad’s description of the characters. We knew who Luke was and what he stood for through them, the same for Darth Vader (which is something that little German kids can impossibly pronounce, so we were allowed to call him “the black Lord” instead), and we had a vague idea of the Light and Dark side of the Force and what they meant. So we acted out our own little stories with the action figures we had.
When I finally turned 10 and was shown the movies for the first time, it was a special day that I’d anticipated since my early childhood. (Of course, my younger brother got to see it the same day. Unfair!) From then on, my contact with and consumption of Star Wars media was pretty much the same as everyone else’s. I dabbled in the EU, bought the magazines, played the games, and not even to the same extent that a serious SW loremaster would.
Except. I still had a dad who’d sometimes refer to himself as Luke Skywalker with a big happy grin when he was having a good moment. He got seriously into astronomy and space observation, from there on into SETI and UFOs, and at the same time into meditation, the mystical and the supernatural. Me, today, I’m a total skeptic, but my teen years were wild in that regard. The “evil Empire” in this setting was prominently the Catholic church that had once upon a time brutally eradicated the old, Pagan nature cults, smashed their monuments, oppressed science and burned women. You can imagine how dad lost his mind when TFA opened with a “cross” eclipsing the screen and Kylo Ren’s lightsaber being a cross as well. Anyway. We spent a lot of time, money and travel trying to set these things right through the power of positive spiritual energy. Just to give a few examples: We and likeminded people went to old monuments all across Germany and England and tried to ‘heal’ them and reactivate their energy patterns. This included admission into the inner circle of Stonehenge – twice! We actually went to Rome, sat by the black obelisk in front of St. Peter’s and meditated on the downfall of the power of the church and all the evil that was enabled by it. (At that occasion, my dad said, he could feel the ‘dark side energy’ oppressingly strong and frightening.) He ‘beamed’ energy patterns across Europe where other people (said they) could actually detect them. He astral traveled. Communicated with spirits and past lives. Decoded ancient star maps. He organized meditation events on all continents, to shift the balance back to the light, these were monitored by the University of Princeton. We sent energetical messages across the stars at alien intelligences, and they ‘answered’ in publicly spectacular ways. (How, you ask? This was in 1992 when crop circles were a thing, and supposedly they were authentic then and had a common, deciphrable pattern and makeup that’s not there in hoaxes and doesn’t happen anymore now.) We trespassed and climbed up dangerous hillsides at night to have illegal meditations on a stone-age pyramid (if you believe in the whole Earth energy thing it’s like activating a massive super laser cannon). The RAF actually sent black helicopters to monitor that (scary at the time to teen me, now I think those pilots must have had a blast). Etc. etc., I’ve got endless stories like that. It was an exciting way to grow up, that’s for sure, and even though I don’t believe in any of it now, the people and experiences were wonderful and positive through and through. Meanwhile, I’m in the 16th year of the relationship with my boyfriend, who is a complete and utter SW nut and has his own story to tell. And my dad eventually straightened things out with his father.
So yeah. Basically I grew up with a real life Jedi warrior. That’s not to say that he didn’t have a Dark side to him, as humans do. There were moments of weakness, and aggression, and at times we were all very scared of him. As the decades passed, he struggled harder and harder to keep the good in the world in view, as despite all his efforts evil, greed and corruption tightened their grip on our planet. His life did not go where he imagined it would, either. There’s much bitterness in him now. We, his family, try to counteract this, but I don’t think it’s working too well. He still occasionally launches into an impromptu Obi-Wan or Vader impression, though, and he still has his love for the planet, the universe and whatever else is out there.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what Star Wars means to me personally, from my own little perspective. To me, it feels like in parts, I’ve lived it. From your perspective, it may mean something entirely different, and that’s just as valid. Just, maybe, stop to consider for a moment before you say to other people that their experiences aren’t. 
