From the Editor’s Desk: Only What You Take with You (Premium)

As a 13-year-old, I eagerly anticipated the release of the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. I have clear memories of the build-up to that release, which included me reading Donald F. Gut’s novelization right before the movie premiered. I devoured it in a single day, though I was confused by the ending, which I’m sure you’ll recall was a cliffhanger. I had never heard of such a thing at that age, and when my dad asked me about the book, I told him that I felt it was unfair that it did not include the ending.

Empire is interesting on many levels. It’s arguably the best of the Star Wars stories though it’s impossible to overstate the impact the first movie had on me and so many others. I was fascinated by all of it, but I found the morality play during Luke’s training, in which he’s told to enter a cave that is strong in the Dark Side of the force. Yoda tells Luke he won’t need his weapon, but Luke, still young and inexperienced, brings it anyway. Once inside the cave, he confronts a vision of his nemesis (and, we’d soon learn, father) Darth Vader, whom he defeats after a short lightsaber duel. Vader’s severed head falls in front of him, and his helmet cracks open, revealing not the mangled form of his enemy but rather Luke’s own face.

The vision was a trick, according to the book, a charade that Luke believed Yoda had arranged because he had carried his lightsaber inside despite his explicit warning not to. “Your weapon,” Yoda had said. “You won’t need it.” But when asked what was in the cave, the little creature had cryptically said, “Only what you take with you.” Luke’s failure to heed this warning was a sign of his immaturity. Or something. I was 13 years old.

This lesson, while only vaguely understood, stuck with me. I later learned of the many influences that Star Wars creator George Lucas leaned on when creating his stories, from Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey to various philosophies and religions and the film serials of his generation that had long since disappeared by the time I was of age. I delighted in all that, but to this day, I’m not entirely sure if there’s a direct influence for the idea behind the Dark Side cave, and if so, what it is.

What I do know is that I pocketed this lesson immediately, and kept it with me. And that almost 45 years later, it still comes to mind when I find myself succeeding or failing to meet some challenge. My reactions to unexpected and unwelcome situations always trigger a bit of self-evaluation–I always wonder about what I could have done differently in negative moments, especially–a form of triage I can’t get past. Less frequently, I can look back on whatever event and feel good about my reactions, see how my demeanor can make or break certain interactions.

This happened repeatedly during our recent trip to Berlin, and at some point, late in the trip, I finally blurted out a quick recap of this cave incident from Empire to my wife, whom I assume was underwhelmed by this less than literary influence. But it’s a good point, no matter the source. You get back what you bring with you. It’s in the same basic category as “pay it forward” or the unknowable but real benefits of positive thinking, of doing the right thing without regard for yourself.

A few examples.

The day we flew to Berlin was a bit stressful. As I noted in What I Use: Berlin 2024 (Premium), my wife and I used to travel to Europe quite frequently, but it’s been a while, and we’ve grown accustomed to the shorter, easier flights to and from Mexico City. This flight was overnight, of course, but it also left earlier in the day than I liked, meaning we’d get in very early in the morning, and I always have trouble sleeping on planes. But we got through the day, drove all the way to Newark, hung out briefly in a United lounge at the airport, and then boarded the plane and found our way to our economy class exit-row seats. My wife and I were across the aisle from each other in the same row. Next to her was a young couple. With a baby.

This is a nightmare scenario for any traveler, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I was maybe too pleased that it was my wife, and not me, sitting next to the baby. She told me later that she experienced that pit-of-the-stomach, knee-jerk moment of despair you’d expect when this type of thing happens. But she recovered quickly and decided to make the best of it. I later told her I call this “making lemonade,” a way of making the best of a lousy situation. She immediately started chatting with the baby and her mother, and the child’s initial suspicion of this outsider, which I found amusing, quickly escalated into interest and then delight. “You’re going to be holding this kid before the flight is over,” I told her early on.

That didn’t happen, but both of us had nothing but positive interactions with this baby. We could see the fear on her parents’ faces disappear and turn to relief and then happiness. The two of us, but especially my wife, had taken what might have been a lousy time and turned it into something else entirely. What’s odd, and this is unrelated in a literal sense but felt related at the time, is that this positive vibe spread throughout the cabin. We fly United all the time, but this flight was curiously friendly, before it even left the ground. The people on board, the flight attendants and other employees, were all overly friendly, if anything. At some point, I leaned into my wife, and asked her if she was seeing what I was seeing. She was. It was weird, but in a good way.

You hear these horror stories all the time, but this flight was eventually delayed by 3 hours due to an incident the airline described as a “radar issue.” I learned about it early thanks to my seatmate, who was using some technical mobile app with a direct FAA feed (or similar): He nodded at me and showed me his phone, which provided more detail about the delays we were about to face, and long before United ever did. The delays unfolded a bit like the 2020 pandemic, in this case turning from minutes into an hour and then into 90 minutes and, finally, three hours.

But nobody lost it. Everyone around us started chatting agreeably, with some vacating their seats for more comfortable perches. The flight attendants brought out drinks, and then snacks, and then more drinks. They were terrific at every step. (Though I found the downplaying of the delays, given my second-hand access to the real situation, to be odd.) But whatever. It was like the positive vibes had spread from person to person like, well, COVID. And while I’m not claiming that my wife manifested that, exactly, that’s what it felt like. It was rather incredible.

Throughout our trip in Berlin, we were taken aback by the friendliness of nearly everyone we met. There were weird little episodes, like the woman at the hotel, telling us with a smile that this woman I was staying with–my wife–would necessitate an additional €20 charge per night for reasons that still escape us. But it was notable that basically every interaction with locals, from waiters to Uber drivers to passersby and anyone else we ran into was wonderful. I tend to think of Germany as being organized, logical, and maybe even a little cold. But Berlin is Bohemian and diverse these days. It has its own vibe, and it was very pleasant. I shared many laughing moments with people there, people whose native language is not English, and it was notably good.

Until it wasn’t. On our second to last night in Berlin, we hadn’t bothered to make a dinner reservation, and when we walked over to the leafy plaza we’d visited several times before to return to a restaurant we liked, it was almost full, inside and out, and clearly understaffed. This is a classic situation Stephanie and I run into all the time, our version of the Sisyphus myth that we’re apparently doomed to repeat endlessly. And I called it, noting that we would now walk around for an hour, not find a place to eat, and grow increasingly upset with each other for this shared failure.

That’s precisely what happened. As the night went from dusk to full-on dark, we kept consulting our phones and walking to new locations, finding nothing suitable, or places that were too busy. We settled on an Asian place that had sushi at one point, sat down, got water, and then were told they were out of sushi, and so we left. We even went back to the original restaurant an hour later, saw a few empty seats outside, sat down, and were then ignored for 15 minutes while the sole waitress out there let a table with over 10 people all cash out individually. I was so upset I could taste it. We got up, left, and walked over to an outside curry wurst stand we had earmarked as a next-to-last resort. And were told they had just closed, despite it being an hour earlier than the posted time.

Hmph.

We had one card left to play. The hotel bar/restaurant, despite being oddly expensive, had excellent food, terrific cocktails, and really nice staff we had previously connected with over two nights. In fact, the second night, the guy behind the bar remembered what I had ordered and asked me if I wanted it again. It would be overpriced, but it was a safe bet. So we headed back after wasting 90 minutes walking around in the dark.

“If we walk into this place, and they tell us the kitchen is closed, you need to know that I’m going to freaking lose my mind,” I told my wife. “I’m talking two-year-old level tantrum.”

The thing is, I was joking. I was also practicing my own form of self awareness and willing myself to just deal with whatever happened. I wasn’t starving. And there were other places to eat–that area of Berlin has a curious number of Italian restaurants for some reason, not something I normally seek out. We’d figure it out.

We did not figure it out.

Have you ever experienced something falling apart right in front of you, in real time, though it feels like it’s happening in slow motion? That’s what this experience was like. We walked up into the restaurant, and in my usual sense of situational awareness, I began assessing how busy it was–not very–and that there was no one sitting at the bar, where we prefer to sit. I also noticed the jumpy little waiter see us walk past him and then follow us to the bar. I had the immediate feeling that he felt slighted, that we were somehow his future tip, and not someone else’s. I didn’t like this, vaguely, but as we sat down, he blurted out, “Is there something I can help you with?” after he almost ran right into us.

I need you to imagine what was going through my mind in this moment. The possible responses I might give to such an inane question when I sit at a bar in a restaurant that’s inside a very expensive hotel for which I am now footing the bill. “What the f#$k do you think we need,” is what I did not ask this oddly disheveled little man, the antithesis of the norm we’d experienced in this place to date. Instead, I held in the darkness and let my wife, always calmer and more polite than I, handle it.

It’s not worth describing what unfolded in detail. But the important bits are that we ordered drinks, didn’t get them for over 30 minutes, asked for menus repeatedly, ordered some food, got that before the drinks arrived, and that I complained several times as employees we’d never met before scurried around like it was busy when it very much was not. That my wife inexplicably got a nose bleed, which I later humorlessly suggested was stress-related. That I was repeatedly asked if everything was all right and was repeatedly ignored, often with a goofy smile, when I responded that it was not. And that after 45 minutes of this, my drink had arrived, but my wife’s had not. And that I finally got off the stool, having decided to stalk over to the front desk and see if I could find some adult supervision.

I was upset. I felt that this was understandable. And I hadn’t totally lost my cool, despite the repeated snubs and inanity, and I felt pretty good about that. But I was done with the nonsense. And when my wife suggested that maybe we should just ride this one out, I recapped the events of the evening, noting each time it would have taken very little to set this right, and that we had remained calm during what felt like a purposeful series of insults over a pretty long period of time. She agreed. So I was heading to the front desk, confused that no one, not once, had tried to set this right.

“What can I do to set this right?” a man we’d never seen before asked, suddenly appearing in front of us behind the bar. He may have arrived in a puff of smoke for all I knew. It wasn’t clear that anyone who worked there that night even understood how badly this night had gone for us.

“I have to be honest, I don’t think it’s possible to set this right,” I replied. And then I rifled through my grievances when asked. He did what someone should have done at least 30 minutes earlier. He gave us drinks, on the house. He comped the food. And then he gave us more drinks.

This was too much.

I engaged in a conversation I often have when things go wrong at a restaurant: I’m not needling for anything here. My goal isn’t to get things for free. I’m happy to pay. I just want to actually get what I asked for. But he was determined. And nice. I think he gave us too much. But when he opened a bottle of wine to pour two glasses for us, he asked me to taste it first, like we were having a normal experience. I looked down at the glass, thought about it, and then tasted it.

I could write a book about the magic of the Riesling in Germany, how you can’t find anything like it in the U.S. And I could expound on the funny but predictable time when I asked to have the driest Riesling in a different restaurant on that trip, only to be told by the delightfully funny waiter that all the Riesling they have in Germany is dry, so I’d need to be more specific, and of how we both laughed. But here, I will simply say that this wine was incredible, that it was so inexplicably good that it overcame my seething unhappiness. I reevaluated this man in front of me.

“You know, that might be one of the best wines I’ve ever tasted,” I said, surprising my wife, who knew where my head was at. And surprising myself, who knew even better where my head was at. He beamed, left us the rest of the bottle, and left us to our own devices as I sat back down, lowering my internal defensive readiness to Defcon 2. Stephanie was staring at me.

“What?”

She reminded me of the time we were in Paris with our daughter Kelly, a story I know all too well and had told you all before, when I escalated and deescalated so quickly that Kelly had an outburst of her own, wondering whether anyone was going to address what she had just witnessed. I’ve since been diagnosed with ADHD–as has my daughter, go figure–and I take Adderall daily, mostly to appease my wife. But at the time, I saw my ability to deescalate in the face of new evidence as a positive. And being honest, I still do, to some degree. But I didn’t appreciate the implicit comparison to this event in that moment. I reminded Stephanie that we were right to be upset and that, more importantly, I hadn’t lost it on these people. I could have. I wanted to. I felt pretty good that I had not.

Fair enough. We eventually paid, I left a great tip, no harm, no foul. And the manager or whomever he was handed me the bottle of wine. It was in a metal ice bucket, full of ice, on a metal stand with a base that I think of as a stanchion. As I noted previously, I only discovered that the ice bucket and the stanchion were not attached when we passed by the front desk, and they separated, with the ice and bottle of wine exploding into a million tiny pieces across a 20-foot-plus diameter circle in front of us. It was humiliating. And further humiliating when we had to return to the restaurant/bar, empty ice bucket and stanchion in hand, to get a replacement.

I offered to pay for this, of course. And repeatedly. But ultimately, we skulked back to the elevators with a new bottle and the ice bucket, but no stanchion this time. Why did he give me that? It was so heavy, and I had no idea they were two pieces. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The next day at lunch is when I brought up the lesson from Yoda in Empire with Stephanie. In part because I was hoping she knew of a more reasonable source for that lesson, though she did not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I still remember it. And I kept thinking about it while we were in Berlin, from the flight out all the way through. Mostly after very positive experiences. And our dinner that night was fantastic: We had made reservations the night before, in the middle of our horrible experience at the hotel bar. There’s no point in a lesson if you don’t learn from it, I guess.

The flight home was a tiring 8.5 hours,and we had to get up at 4:45 am. But it was direct, there were no delays, and we got to our home just under two hours after we had stepped off the plane, after breezing through customs in Newark using a new touchless global entry system with no lines. We had had some fun interactions with our flight attendant, who was clearly a native New Yorker with that indelible accent, and yet spoke perfect German. More importantly, to us, she was hilarious. And when a man walked down towards the bathroom, gingerly holding a small bag as we were still taxiing to the gate, she looked at him incredulously and they had a quick exchange. It was weird.

Then she looked at us and exclaimed, “God, I love my job!” We all laughed, and I referenced her later on the ride home, noting that people like that are special and should be celebrated. They’re the difference between a terrible time and a great time. And we need more people like her. And then silently, to myself, I noted that this is all we can do, all of us, in any situation.

Yoda was right. You get only what you take with you.