Ten years ago today Michael Jackson died. That same year also saw the birth of Bitcoin as the world was still reeling from The Great Recession, (Thanks) Obama was kicking off his first year of presidency and ends up with a Nobel Peace Prize, some guy named Sully doesn’t crash a plane and I’m just about to move out of my parent’s house to live in Hampton with 30-ish other crazy kids.
But one other thing happened that year, something which has stuck with me all this time later.
J.J. Abrams released the first in a series of movies bearing the Star Trek franchise mantle. Now, that’s much less of a spectacle of human history than someone attacking the Pope, but there’s a scene in the otherwise mediocre film which has captured my imagination for a decade now. [Conversation begins at 2:53 in case you aren’t interested in a salacious bar fight.]
“Your father was captain of a starship for 12 minutes. He saved over 800 lives...including your mother’s, and yours. I dare you to do better.”
What strikes me about this challenge at the end of the scene is that right up until Pike says it Kirk has written off the whole interaction. The only thing on his horizon is the next moment, the next beer, the next day living a life which feels worlds from “something better”. But in this story, Pike’s departing line is what stirs him to ride by the shipyards later that night and see his future ship being built. Freeing him to dream of a far bigger reality than he ever has before.
One moment changes everything in this story.
Without that line, that moment, that single challenge the whole story falls apart. There’s no catalyst to action to move the troubled young man out of the normal life he’s settled for into something far greater. He doesn’t get on that shuttle and enlist in Starfleet. Never meets Bones or Spock or any of the other people he becomes lifelong friends with. Doesn’t save countless lives along decades of unfathomable journeys.
Not to mention the awkward alien threesome and getting to fistfight Bentobox Cabbagepatch in the sequel.
But Pike’s challenge doesn’t hold any weight to it without the lines right before that.
“Look, so your Dad dies. You can settle for a less than ordinary life, or do you feel like you were meant for something better?”
One of the reasons this scene has stuck with me all these years is that it captures what we as people feel deep behind the scenes of the rest of life. We are, all of us, cursed by tragedy. In all forms, shapes and sizes. We know Death. Sickness. Disappointment. Loneliness. Broken Promises and Dashed Dreams. It is at the core of what makes us human - to know loss. But in the same instant as feeling those pains, we are propelled forward by the hope of Something Better. That life doesn’t have to just be This, but that it could be something More. And that idea is the engine of change; the catalyst for every action which ever was and ever will be.
We long for the stars, even when our feet are firmly planted in the cornfields of Iowa.
This is me. And it’s you. We are invited by life and by the divine to Something Better. What does that invitation look like for you this week? This month? This year? What does it look like to move your vision from being focused on the next weekend, the next vacation, the next work project, the next date night, into the bigger reality of your unfathomable journey?
We are creatures crafted from stardust. Made for radical action to change the world around us in profound ways. Like me, you have experienced loss and like Kirk you can settle for an ordinary life, if you choose.
I dare you to do better.