Hitler was a great man. Of course that depends on how you want to define great in that sentence. He was no great man when it came to morality or spreading peace, but he was, in fact, a great man. He quickly rose to power in Germany, brought every major powerhouse on the planet to war and some of those nations to their knees, slaughtered millions of people, and the only person who managed to kill him was himself. There is no doubt then that Hitler was a man of greatness.
But what if Hitler used his greatness for good?
When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Star Wars. A LOT of Star Wars. I remember watching The Empire Strikes Back on TV with my dad when I was like five. Between that time and 1999, when The Phantom Menace played in theatres, whenever my parents would take me to the local movie rental store, I would always ask to rent the Star Wars trilogy. I can tell you, even, without looking it up, the exact date for the release of Revenge of the Sith. May 19, 2005. That's how obsessed I was. And still kind of am. I own over 100 Star Wars novels. I still have toy lightsabers (beat to hell) from when I was a kid. I have hundreds of dollars worth of Star Wars Legos and action figures.
Star Wars has obviously had a huge impact on my life, as you might imagine. So much so that it played a role in my interest in writing. I've been writing for a long time, but when I was in sixth grade, I was writing a piece of fan fiction about Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice that turned to the dark side before Obi-Wan Kenobi was a padawan. If there's anything Star Wars has given me, it is an appreciation of story.
I wish I didn't delete all of my MySpace blogs from a few years ago. There's one I would like to share, but it's gone. I remember the idea though, because the idea is what this blog is all about and what I've been leading up to.
(STAR WARS SPOILER ALERT... wait... you haven't seen Star Wars? What the f...)
I always used to liken myself to Anakin Skywalker (later Darth Vader). Anakin was a kid believed to be mentioned in a prophecy that told of a boy who would bring balance to the Light and Dark sides of the Force. He was a great boy, and he became a great and powerful man. But instead of defeating evil, he became the evil he was thought to destroy. For some reason, perhaps from some root of narcissism, I always thought of myself as a great boy who would grow up and do great things. One fear I had, though, and that I blogged about on MySpace years ago, was that I was just like Anakin. I was great. But I would have to choose just what kind of great I wanted to be. And I always wanted to be the good kind. The kind that saves people and flies a banner of peace. But I was always afraid that I would "succumb to the dark side."
The fantastic and terrible thing is... I have become neither of those things. I am not even the great man I thought I would be. I can look back and say I was a flawed, but great boy. But I am no great man. I have done nothing, nothing, to further peace or make something useful of myself. I sit here and write, and even then, most of the time, it's half-assed, and I don't write as often as I've set my standards for. I have not become a source of evil or good, rather, I've become a source of inaction and indecision. Life is way more complex than 14 year-old Montanna ever thought it would be. I see 14 year-old Montanna as a little brother. And I'm sorry I let you down, buddy.
