My son has just now discovered the Star Wars movies. He is seven, and at that perfect age when imagination runs wild and anything is possible...including becoming a Jedi Knight. It matters not that Jedi's only exist in the movies. To a kid, if you can conceive it, you can achieve it. I remember once being so empowered and expansive.

He runs around the house, waving his toy light saber, telling me he wants to be Darth Vader only a good Darth Vader, because Darth gets to wear the coolest outfit...and carry the red light saber (as opposed to the blue of the good Jedi) and my son loves the color red. That logic might fail me, because I know the capacity for evil Darth is capable of. But to my son, he loves what he loves and makes no excuses for it.

Watching him lose himself in myth, story and legend, I am reminded of myself at his age, losing my own life in the daily doings of Nancy Drew and other heroes and heroines of my day. It saddens me a little to think I am now too mature and grown up to lose myself in much of anything, except maybe in a man, and we all know how bad that works out. Maybe I will, when my son is back in school tomorrow, pick up his light saber and run around the house pretending to be a Jedi Knight. A good one, of course, despite the red of my saber. Not that red is my favorite color...I actually prefer blue.

But because, like my son proves, life is best when you work with what you have right in front of you, and let your imagination fill in the blanks accordingly.